Strahlenfels Castle Ruins

The photos number 1 and 2 uploaded here are not taken by myself, but were copied from the Wikipedia entry about the radiant rock. The key point I'm getting at is that these photos were taken back in 2008.
The castle rock now looks different. As the photo of gecko and mine show, the slope that was exposed at that time has now completely grown back into a really impenetrable bush forest. Even the path marked on the map halfway up the rocky massif past the grotto is difficult to walk on.
There is no official path leading up to the Burgstall. A climb branches off to the south just after the start of the previously mentioned path and is hardly noticeable during the growing season. It leads over the steps cut into the rock mentioned in the Wikipedia article. I added a sketch as photo number 5.
The radiant rock is worth a climb. You still have a bit of a distant view from above, you can also see the tower fragment from the competitor Wildenfels. With this system, as with so many others, the sustainability of the rock and slope exposures that have been carried out is not given. Without hungry goats constantly circling around, everything grows over again very quickly.
Lots more information about the Strahlenfels: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgstall_ Strahlenfels

From below, you can barely guess the spur castle that once stood on top of the rock outcrop. But on top of the ridge, you can still see some remnants of walls between the trees and rocks.

On the west side of the Strahlenfels Castle Hill, a rocky spur branches off about 100 meters to the west, which was used to build a castle. The north side of the rocky spur drops about 15 meters vertically, and the west and south sides also drop steeply, partly interspersed with rocks, also 15 meters. Only the east side is connected to the slightly raised castle hill and had to be protected accordingly. There you can see a presumably natural ditch, which may have served as a neck ditch.Of the castle on the rocky spur, only a six-meter-long and two-meter-high wall remains (image 4), which is in danger of falling away, and two smaller wall remains on the east side, which are only visible from below, remain. There is also a round cistern with a diameter of about half a meter on the castle plateau. It is still about half a meter deep and filled with leaves.In 1589, there was still a residential building, opposite which was a brick floor, also a building, in which there was a cellar, a chapel and above it a grain store.The entrance to the castle was on the south side of the rocky outcrop (image 2) via a seven-step staircase hewn out of the rock (image 3), from which a narrow path led upwards. You can probably imagine the entrance being like that of Pottenstein Castle. Wildenfels Castle and Wolfsberg Castle also had similar entrances.There may have been an outer bailey on a 15-meter lower level of the terrain to the south, but nothing of it remains.At the foot of the rocky outcrop on the northwest side outside the castle complex there is a small cave, the Strahlenfels Castle Cave (Cave Register of the Franconian Alb, D 516), which was closed off from the outside with walls. It probably served as a storage room for the castle residents.Source: Wikipedia