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9-800: The Westrich Plateau consists mainly of the Sickingen Heights in the north and the Zweibrücken Hills in the south which, morphologically, belong more to northeastern Lorraine in France ). The main plateau falls away in a marked scarp slope , the Sickingen Escarpment, to the northwest (towards the Homburg Basin) and especially to the north, towards the Landstuhl Marsh . By contrast, the eastern edge of

18-661: A landscape in the western part of the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate . The region was named after the family of imperial knight, Franz von Sickingen (1481–1523), because most of the area belonged to the territory of the House of Sickingen in the Middle Ages . The Sickingen Heights form the northern part of the Westrich Plateau ; about a third of the area within the county of Kaiserslautern and two-thirds in

27-751: Is the plateau's westward transition to the Saarland and even less than that in the east, where the valley of the Moosalb forms the boundary. In the south the Sickingen Heights transition almost seamlessly into the Zweibrücken Hills . Much of the Sickingen Heights is drained southwards by the Moosalb, Wallhalb and Auerbach into the Schwarzbach and then via the Blies , Saar and Moselle into

36-831: The Moosalb valley, which forms the actual eastern boundary. To the south the Zweibrücken Hills continue the plateau into France , and more specifically into the Bitscherland and the Alsace bossue . The central section of the plateau's western boundary with the Saint Ingbert-Kirkeler Woods and, further south, with the Bliesgau , runs (according to the Bundesanstalt für Landeskunde , Saarbrücken sheet , and popular opinion) just west of

45-613: The Rhine . The Lambsbach flows westwards directly into the Blies. The land is sparsely settled and the only large towns occur on the lower-lying perimeter of the plateau. There are no pan-regional transport routes, except for a mostly two-lane section of the A ;62 motorway Landstuhl– Pirmasens . Due to its remoteness, the region is well suited for hiking e.g. along the Mill Trail in

54-715: The Westrich transitions rather smoothly from its muschelkalk plateau to the bunter sandstone of the Palatine Forest . The subdivisions of the plateau along the Moosalb and near Eppenbrunn also extend into the wooded region of the Palatine Forest Nature Park . In the east the land gradually descends to the settlement fringe of Pirmasens and the Trualbe , opposite the Queidersbach and

63-748: The county of Südwestpfalz . It extends from Sickingen's town of Landstuhl in the north almost to the town of Zweibrücken in the south and from the border between Rhineland-Palatinate and the Saarland in the west to the Palatinate Forest in the east. The Sickingen Heights belong to the major region known as the Palatine-Saarland Muschelkalk Region ( Pfälzisch-Saarländisches Muschelkalkgebiet ). The hilly plateau, which lies at heights from 300 to 430 m above  sea level (NN) descends very steeply in

72-642: The north in several, densely wooded, escarpments to the Landstuhl Marsh . Numerous small and medium-sized rock formations from the bunter sandstone of the Karlstal beds outcrop along the escarpment , for example the Heidenfelsen near Hauptstuhl , the eponymous rocks near Bärenloch in Kindsbach or the rock landscape in the Fleischackerloch near Landstuhl. Somewhat less rugged in appearance

81-572: The state border with Saarland and does not cross the valley of the Blies , which from here on forms the boundary with the first-named of the two regions. This compares with a purely Saarland division according to Quasten which also counts a narrow strip of land southwest of Blieskastel (right = west of the Blies) as part of the Zweibrücken Westrich. Sickingen Heights The Sickingen Heights ( German : Sickinger Höhe ) form

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