Valley Of The Selke

The valley is an oasis of life so abundant and full of color that when the river flows through it, it hardly knows which way to look, and thus it winds endlessly along the earth in such a striking zig zag pattern that even the most diligent scientists would have a hard time understanding how it formed. The Selke is a right tributary of the River Bode that rises in the Harz Mountains of central Germany and runs through the northeastern Harz Foreland in the state of Saxony-Anhalt. It has a total length of 64 km, of which 30 km lies in the forested mountains of the Harz and the remaining 34 km in the agricultural region of the Harz Foreland. Depending on the bedrock the Selke has incised deeply into the Harz Mountains or created broad valleys. In Meisdorf on the northeastern edge of the Lower Harz the Selke leaves the forested regions of the mountains and runs from here across a cultivated plain, continuing to flow in an easterly or northeasterly direction, as it had in the Harz, as far as Ermsleben. Beyond Ermsleben the river swing through 90° to the northwest, and runs from here in an almost straight line to its mouth on the River Bode near Rodersdorf, a village in the borough of Wegeleben. The Selke empties into the Bode at an elevation of 118 m. High above the Selke Valley is a striking and largely preserved medieval castle, Falkenstein, which is open to the public. On the other side of the valley, on a prominent spur, is a lofty viewing point, the Selkesicht (330 m above sea level) at the site of another castle, the Akkeburg, with good views of Falkenstein Castle and the Selke valley. Both locations are checkpoints in the Harzer Wandernadel hiking network. This sound uses the following file from Freesound: http://www.freesound.org/samplesViewSingle.php?id=118788