Sunken lane

A sunken road is a road that has been cut by centuries of use with carts and cattle as well as rainwater runoff into the surrounding terrain.

Description

Ravines are available in different landscapes with different soil types. Widespread they are in Lösslandschaften as Lösshohlweg, in addition they are also found in areas with high forest use on soft substrates, such as in sandstone areas such as in the Palatinate Forest.

To shrubs and bushes settle on the sides of ravines, which are small animals as shelter and food. Therefore ravines lure evening and at night bats that make here hunting moths and other insects. For agricultural areas and forests ravines are often an environmental enrichment.

Arisen because of human activities, threatens the sunken paths today by people as well as by soil erosion Expiration: Unused ravines verwuchern or slip on. Today, many working together citizens and authorities to obtain narrow paths archaeological monuments; formerly they were often filled with rubble or garden refuse.

Ravines are of cultural-historical and archaeological significance for the early history of a landscape. Many date back to Roman times.

There were also so-called covered ravines, which were very deeply cut ravines to unforested mountain slopes or paths to a castle. They were deeper than carts were high, so that one could long put trees across it and cover it with branches. Thus, carts and people for enemies only from the immediate vicinity were visible on these sections. Where villages were protected by a Gebück, the place could only be achieved through ravines. Their depth was in the vicinity of Gebücks greatest. Here they were covered with long tree trunks to a control bridge to observe or to shut off the circulation below.

New ravines also emerged as a result of bypassing the road coercion. This prompted lords as those of Karlfried to prevent with countermeasures such as ditch and ramparts their use. Intention was to secure their revenue for road tolls and road preservation.

To narrow paths often shrouded in legends. In Uelzen in Lower Saxony the Liekweg leads to the cemetery.

The Swiss William Tell is reputed in November 1307 the bailiff Gessler to Altdorf from a safe hiding place in a narrow pass (quote from the play Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich Schiller: he must come through this hollow way ... ) have shot at Küssnacht with the crossbow. The now called the Hohle Gasse road was built in its present form in 1937 by stone settings as artificially constructed ravine.

Also in the Sauerland are numerous centuries-old sunken roads that have worked through forestry and mining partially four to five feet deep in the earth.

In Rhinehessen Alsheim and Mette home there is probably the largest hollow way system in Germany.

Lösshohlwege

Typical of Lösslandschaften are the Lösshohlwege. Particularly striking Lösshohlwege can be found in the Imperial chair at Freiburg in the Black Forest foothills of the Breisgau and the Ortenau. There, they are often referred to as the Kinzig.

At the sunken paths in the Emperor chair is found in the literature, the following description: . " The ravines at the Kaiser chair form a labyrinth, in which only the local knowledge does not get lost from the main streets, the up striving on the slopes under constant bends and turns, branch off to all sides equally convoluted side streets off. Every system of ravines has the outline of a much branched, rooted in the village tree. humans, animals, cars and water have the hollow streets ausgetieft increasingly in the course of time and expanded. thunderstorms rain looking in their sequence and dig deep at the edges, kañonartige erosion furrows with potholes, step-like heels and a tunnel erosion. loaded with Rebreisig car scar the yellow walls. "

Since loess than loose rock a special stability, which Lößhohlwege are less incurred as a result of the compression of the traffic floor, but by the destruction of the internal structure of the loess in which the mineral dust grains (mostly quartz ) are connected by lime " cement-like ". With the Wegnutzung about by wagon wheels, this structure is destroyed and the " single grain" are washed away when it rains. In this way were able to dig in the Imperial chair over the centuries hollow streets of depth up to 20 m.

Lösshohlwege are ecologically valuable habitats for many plants and animals as they offer special conditions. In particular, the contrasts between shaded and sunny, dry and wet and windy and windless places are responsible for the existence of the community ravine. Man caves were to be processed in the light and partially used but sturdy loess of the side walls of a ravine as storage space - but not as long -lasting place to live, as has been erroneously asserted earlier.

In Rheinhessen there especially between the communities Alsheim and Mette home still one of the largest systems of Lösshohlwegen in Germany. 11.5 km have been preserved and ten kilometers are walkable. 30 km hiking trails have been laid out from the hollow -way group Alsheim. Especially in the months of April to October, shows the special flora and fauna. Rare plants such as the steppe cherry (Prunus fruticosa ), or Alsatian hair strand ( Peucedanum alsaticum ), an umbel flowering are still quite common to find.

Ravines in rocky ground

Ravines is also available in the rocky terrain. There are two reasons for this:

• The axes of many wagons had - already in the Roman Empire - a standard track width. The edges of the shod with metal bearing surfaces of the wheels carrying the rock (especially soft ) on the roadway. Especially busy roads or those that are often driven by carts with heavy loads were removed and thereby dug deeper and deeper.
• Also with horseshoe ( horses) and jaw plates ( ox ) shod draft animals wore off pavement, especially on inclines.
• In particular steep portions of a path to put the lower track surface, to reduce the pitch.