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17-705: The way begins on the Nahe Cycleway . Running past Disibodenberg Abbey and then making its way via Odernheim am Glan and Meisenheim it reaches the Kusel Musikantenland . In the Veldenz town of Lauterecken there is a railway connexion and the option to switch onto the Lauter Valley Cycleway to Kaiserslautern. A few kilometres further on, the trail passes Offenbach-Hundheim and the old Benedictine Provost Church of St. Mary . It then continues initially in

34-784: A bicycle calling out and reads Glan-Blies-Weg. The route runs predominantly on asphalt forest tracks , farm tracks and cycle paths. Disibodenberg Abbey Disibodenberg ( German pronunciation: [diziˈboːdn̩bɛʁk] ) is a monastery ruin near Staudernheim in Rhineland-Palatinate , Germany . It was founded on the eponymous hill near the convergence of the Glan and the Nahe rivers by Saint Disibod . Hildegard of Bingen , who wrote Disibod's Hagiography "Vita Sancti Disibodi", lived in Disibodenberg for 39 years. Today, it lies within

51-549: A southwesterly direction, then swings south to Altenglan . At Altenglan, a junction with the Fritz-Wunderlich Way runs through Kusel on an old railway trackbed to Freisen . Between Altenglan and Staudernheim , there is a separate c. 40 km (25 mi) draisine route that runs through the Glan valley. The cycleway continues for two kilometres alongside the federal highway . Between Glan-Münchweiler and Niedermohr

68-642: Is joined from the north by the Saar Cycleway , which runs between Sarreguemines and Völklingen parallel to the Saarland Cycleway . To the south is a junction with the cycling path along the Saar Canal and thus to the French cycle network. The bidirectional way is signposted throughout. The waymarks along the route give the distances and destinations as well as the logo of the way. The multicolored emblem features

85-599: The Barbarossa Cycleway branches off, running through North Palatinate to Worms . From Glan-Münchweiler the route follows the old trackbed of the Glan Valley Railway via Nanzdietschweiler , with its old washing facility and the preserved mill from 1884, through the Elschbach Tunnel . It continues past the lake of Ohmbachsee to Schönenberg-Kübelberg , where it passes the protected railway station . Next,

102-466: The "Nature Protection Area Disibodenberg". In 640, Disibod came as a missionary from Ireland to Francia . After working for 10 years in Vosges and Ardennes , he arrived near Odernheim am Glan and started teaching there. According to Hildegard's Vita, the monastery was founded "where [Disibod's] walking stick, planted in the ground, elicited greenery, where a white doe scratched a freshwater spring into

119-453: The building of a Frauenklause, a female hermitage associated with the monastery, at Disibodenberg. Jutta von Sponheim , the pious daughter of Stephen II, Count of Sponheim , and Hildegard of Bingen took their vows there from Otto of Bamberg on All Saint's Day 1112. Following Jutta's death in 1136, Hildegard succeeded her as abbess. The female community at Disibodenberg was moved to nearby Rupertsberg in 1147, following several disputes with

136-553: The foot of the hill, and wine is cultivated on the hill. The ruins are open for visitors, and contextualized by information panels. A small museum dedicated to Hildegard is situated in a former agricultural building on the site. Farm track An agricultural road or farm track is a service road that serves predominantly agricultural or forestry purposes and has only local significance. Agricultural roads are typically unpaved dirt roads or covered with gravel , but in some cases asphalt roads are agricultural roads. In

153-401: The ground, and where the two rivers converged". It is thought that, before Disibod's arrival, the hill already was the site of a Celtic temple. Disibod built a Baptistery at the spring on the foot of the hill, after his death in 700, his supposedly miraculous burial site became a destination for pilgrimages. Shortly after Disibod's death, a church and monastery-like structure was founded on

170-667: The hill, one of the oldest such foundations within the Diocese of Mainz . In 745, Saint Boniface , the Bishop of Mainz , visited Disibodenberg and translated the relics of Disibod to the altar of the new monastery church. The monastery was destroyed by the Vikings in 882, and by the Magyars in the early 10th century. In both occasions, the monks fled and abandoned the monastery, it was dissolved by Bishop Hatto II . However, in 1000, Bishop Willigis had

187-544: The male monks and the growth of Hildegard's Frauenklause to 18 nuns. Not long after Hildegard's departure from Disibodenberg, the fortunes of the monastery began to darken, mostly due to local feuds and the growing issue of the robber barons in the area. In 1259, Archbishop Gerhard I. von Dhaun of Mainz replaced the Benedictine presence on the now-largely abandoned abbey with Cistercians from Otterberg Abbey. Under Cistercian sponsorship, Disibodenberg's debts were paid and

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204-652: The monastery entered its third, and last, period of prosperity, which lasted until ca. 1500. The monastery was plundered in 1471 during a dispute between Elector Frederick I and Count Louis I , and in 1504 during the War of the Succession of Landshut . Before it had time to rebuild, the Reformation engulfed the Palatinate, and the last abbott, Peter von Limbach, handed Disibodenberg over to Wolfgang, Count Palatine of Zweibrücken . It

221-479: The monastery reestablished, entrusting it to 12 Augustinian canons and endowing it with several of the surrounding towns and farms. In 1107, Archbishop Ruthard transferred the control of the monastery from its canons to a group of Benedictines from Mainz, who presided over the construction of a new monastery church, which was completed in 1143. Following the Benedictine takeover, the Counts of Sponheim sponsored

238-797: The old embankment of the Blies Valley Railway . The last station on German soil is the Bliesbruck-Reinheim European Culture Park , with a Celtic prince's grave and settlement from the Roman era . Here the way crosses the Franco-German border and comes to an end after Saargemünd (French: Sarreguemines ) at the confluence of the Blies and the Saar . In Sarreguemines the Glan-Blies Way

255-482: The surrounding area. From 1842 to 1844, then-owner Peter Wannemann uncovered the monastery's remaining ruins and turned the property into a romantic landscape park . The property's last private owner, Ehrengard Freifrau von Racknitz, handed it over to the Disibodenberg Scivias Foundation , which retains ownership to this day. A small 1998 chapel dedicated to Hildegard of Bingen is situated at

272-690: The way passes Waldmohr with its bog mill and the Eichelscheiderhof . Here it leaves the route of the railway and follows cycle tracks to Homburg . After Beeden the way runs along the River Blies through the Bliesgau Biosphere Reserve. In Wörschweiler , a detour goes to the abbey ruins and the Schwarzenacker Roman Museum . On the next stage, the route reaches Blieskastel with its baroque Altstadt . The route runs along

289-482: Was secularized in 1559. Save for failed attempts in 1631 and 1639 to revitalize the abbey under Spanish patronage during the Thirty Years' War , the monastery fell into ruin. Its buildings were largely intact, albeit ruinous, until the area's occupation by France between 1797 and 1814, during which the monastery's use as a quarry commenced. Spolia from Disibodenberg was widely used for infrastructure and buildings in

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