Apolloweg Valwig
The Apolloweg Valwig is a 7.5 kilometer circular hiking trail in the municipality of Valwig on the Moselle in Rhineland-Palatinate . The circular route overcomes a difference in altitude of 200 meters on partially steep sections and is intended to bring the visitor closer to cultural history - this includes viticulture in particular on the Moselle - landscape as well as fauna and flora in the Moselle valley. The path was created as part of the state program WeinKulturLandschaft Mosel and the LEADER II joint initiative of the European Union .
Culture
The path leads past the parish church of St. Martin in Valwig, which was built according to plans by the state architect Johann Claudius von Lassaulx (1823-27). The building, completed in 1927, is the first neo-Romanesque church in Germany and was the new building for a dilapidated Romanesque church from around 1200.
The late Gothic pilgrimage church of St. Maria and Maria Magdalena is located in the Valwigerberg district . After knight Johann von Winneburg acquired the now destroyed Tester Hof from the Mainz canons in 1411, including a Romanesque chapel, he had a new chapel built on the occasion of his wedding, which was completed around 1440 and consecrated in 1445. The nave was vaulted shortly after 1500 as a three-aisled pseudo - basilica and around 1900 the church received a new west portal.
fauna and Flora
The rocky slopes form the habitat of many rare heat-loving plants and animals. The fauna includes zippammer , wall lizard , western emerald lizard, smooth snake , steppe saddle insect , red-winged wasteland insect , sail butterfly and the eponymous red Apollo butterfly. The flora includes the fodder plant of the red apollo, the white sedum plant , as well as blue lettuce , sessile oak , hornbeam , wild cherry and common hazel . The wild-growing evergreen common boxwood from the Mediterranean region is a specialty in the coppice .
Viticulture
Although the areas along the Apolloweg are undoubtedly an outstanding, if not the best, vineyard location in the Cochem-Zell district - steep south-facing slopes, which are also oriented towards the light-reflecting water surface of the Moselle (no side valley); frost-resistant coppice above the (former) vineyard areas; no major valley cuts that would introduce cold air from above - almost all of the vineyards there are now fallow. In this respect, the Apolloweg is a vivid example of how within a few decades - the "vineyard dying" began in the 1980s - a cultural landscape is abandoned to decay, the creation of which took many centuries and countless generations.
A side effect of this development is that the animals and plants mentioned in the “ Fauna and Flora ” section are finding increasingly poor living conditions because the bushes and forest cover areas that were previously kept free by viticulture are advancing rapidly. In this respect, the Apolloweg is likely to have largely lost its specific attractiveness in a few years, since it will then be a pure forest path.