Abschnittsbefestigung Kuhfels

The Kuhfels spur fort once guarded a dry valley in the Oberpfalz. It stands on a narrow rock ridge that juts into the valley floor 668 metres above sea level. A natural trench, twenty metres wide and two metres deep, cuts off the ridge from the plateau on the south-west side. The north-west face and the spur’s tip drop steeply for several metres, while the south-east slope, though climbable, is protected by a low stone wall. The wall runs for about twenty metres along the south-east edge and then turns at a right angle toward the north-west. There it continues for another seventy-five metres, rising to eighty centimetres high in places. The entrance may have been at this far end, where a mountain hut now flattens the ground. No records survive to say when the fort was built or who used it; only the earthen rampart and the trench remain. Visitors reach the site along quiet farm tracks south of Bachtesfeld. The ridge offers wide views over the surrounding countryside. A short scramble brings them to the top of the rock, where the sheer drops give a clear sense of how the original builders used the land. The protected area is marked as a scheduled monument, preserving the last traces of a vanished fort.