Short characteristics

A beautiful, very well marked lowland route leading mostly by fire lanes or fields. Apart from nature you can see a small town of Chocianow. You can reach it conveniently by car or by train to Rokitki station. Travelling by train, it is best to follow the road 328 from the station and enter the loop near Rakow. It is a good idea to take an additional shortcut that allows you to shorten or divide the loop into two parts.

Chocianow

For me it is one of the most pleasant small Lower Silesian towns rich in the Piast history. It is truly worth seeing the square with the church of St. Joseph and ruined but very impressive palace and park surrounding the church. I was most impressed by a 1973 sculpture ‘They Are Silent And Yet They Call 1939-1945’ made by Zbigniew Fraczkiewicz. It is a shocking epitaph commemorating the victims of World War II and also a great work of art by one of the best Polish sculptors. In its form, you can see a large mincer in which the ranks of nameless, uniformed faces disappear. Contemporary context intertwines with older historical traces. The sculpture castings were made in a local steelworks, whose past reached the beginning of the dynamic development of Chocianow in the nineteenth century. Carl Bosch, a Nobel Prize winner and one of the most important chemists of the 20th century and later the president of IG Farben, had his internship in that plant. IG Farben was an important German chemical concern, which played a huge role by supporting the Nazis and producing means necessary to wage war. In some sense, the history has made a loop here – just like all over the Lower Silesia.

Nature

The loop leads through the Black Ponds reserve rich in peat bogs and marsh forests and near the Fryderyk Hill we can admire the ruins of the neo -Baroque observation tower, hoping that someday someone may renovate it.