Rems and Winterbach · River, water, nature and history

Reading the landscape

On the trail of the Rems valley's riddles

Why does a website about a surf wave carry pages full of terrain models, cadastral maps from 1832, cold-air corridors and archive finds? The short answer: we are looking for a wave – and discovering a whole landscape. The longer answer begins on the Atlantic.

What you cannot see makes the difference

Stand on the Portuguese beach of Nazaré in winter and you see waves the height of an apartment block – a few kilometres along the coast they are half that size. Why here of all places? The answer lies beneath the surface: a vast submarine canyon runs towards the coast and focuses the energy of the swell onto one point. You cannot see it. But whoever can read the charts understands the wave. Surfers all over the world do exactly that: they read landscapes, including where they cannot be seen.

Ski touring is the same, with snow instead of water: the snowpack hides the terrain, and whoever wants to travel safely reads steepness, hollows, gullies and ridges from map and landform – the snow only speaks to those who know what lies beneath. And on a river? The wave hangs on bed shape, gradient, constrictions and discharge. → How a standing wave forms

Our toolbox for the Rems valley

In the Rems valley the landscape lies beneath forest, meadows, roads – and beneath the changes of many centuries. Fortunately there are tools to see through all that:

• The terrain model: Baden-Württemberg has surveyed its terrain by laser from the air, to the metre and finer. Strip out the vegetation and the bare ground appears – with every old terrace, every sunken lane, every pit beneath the forest. → Traces in the Hungerberg
• The cadastral map of 1832: officially surveyed, overlayable exactly onto today's aerial images. It shows vineyards, paths, the old course of the Rems including the mill race. → Historic course of the Rems
• Aerial photographs since 1953, gauge records since 1931, climate data, biotope surveys – and lately: archive files. The drift history of the Rems lies in the state archives, down to a file about the Winterbach rafting chute. → The forgotten wave of Winterbach

From these layers we build pictures – sliders between 1832 and today, relief images, profiles you can draw yourself with the elevation profile tool. Not as a gimmick: each layer answers questions the others raise.

How we work: know, suspect, find out

With every discovery we separate three things – recognisable on our pages by the recurring box "What the landscape tells us":

What we know – backed by measurement, map, file or literature, with a source.
What we suspect – labelled as an assessment, with the reasons for it.
What we still want to find out – the open questions we keep working on.

A suspicion is not proof, and "cannot currently be decided" is an honest result. Sometimes the data corrects us – and that, too, then goes on the page. And sometimes our readers know more than any file: hints, old photographs and stories reach us via the contact details in the Impressum (German) – especially welcome when they challenge one of our assessments.

What we have found this way

The method sounds abstract – its finds are not: the vineyards of 1832 on the Hungerberg and their stone steps beneath the forest, the puzzling ditch on the parish boundary, the hollow at the Scheuplätze, the vanished mill race in the floodplain, the cold-air flows of the side valleys, the Rems grown flashier – and most recently the rafting chute of Winterbach in the files of the State Archives, and the valley near Essingen that drains in two directions. → Traces in the Hungerberg · → Cold air for Winterbach · → More flow for the Rems · → The riddle of the rafting chute · → One valley, two directions

Frequently asked questions

Do you need training for this?

No – curiosity, care and open data are enough to start. The state of Baden-Württemberg provides the terrain model, cadastral maps and aerial photographs openly, the State Institute for the Environment (LUBW) the gauge data, the State Archives the finding aids. Where our analysis reaches its limits, we say so – and some questions need specialists, for geology or archaeology, say.

Do you publish everything you find?

No. Finds that touch privacy or property, coordinates of sensitive spots and anything half-baked stay internal. What goes on the website is documented, placed in context and of interest to everyone.

Can I join the search?

Gladly. What helps us most are old photographs, maps, documents and memories – and observations in the terrain. Our maps of Winterbach with the field-name finder and elevation profile are a good place to start exploring on your own.

Sources: LGL Baden-Württemberg: digital terrain models (DGM1/DGM025), historical cadastral maps and aerial photographs, dl-de/by-2-0 · LUBW: gauge data · Baden-Württemberg State Archives: online finding aids · On Nazaré: Instituto Hidrográfico (Portugal), bathymetry of the Nazaré canyon · → Traces in the Hungerberg

Last updated: 15 October 2026 · Initiative Remswelle