The Red Moore and other Rhön, Germany Off The Beaten Path Tips

The Red Moore is the most southern of the four big Rhön moores. With its 314 hecters, it's the biggest moore in the Rhön.
Unfortunately, they started digging up the peat moss at the beginning of the 19th century to use for fuel, and continued to dig it up all the way until 1984, which lead to the destruction of high of this highland moore.
In June of 1979 the area was finally declared a National Park, and a moritorium was declared for mining peat moss in 1984.
The moore was then artificially dammed to restore it's moist biotope. This created the moore lake, and turned it into one of the most beautiful places in Germany, with it's strange ghost dead-wood birch trees.

From the lake, you can take a 1.2 km long path, that has billboards every so often explaining the flora and the fauna that you can see along the way. Unique in this park are the one-of-a-kind Carpathian Birch groves, the strange rare moore swap plants that are related to the Venus Fly Trap and the small European wild bog cranberries, called "Preiselbeeren".
You can get to the Red Moore by taking Highway B278 from Bischofsheim. From the parking lot "Moordorf" it's only about 200 m to the lake.

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From the around 170 different kinds of butterflies that can found in Bavaria, about two thirds of them are in the Rhön. More than 130 different species of butterflies can be found in the Rhön, which makes it unique place in Europe, especially for butterfly enthusaists, or Lepidopterologists.
The Natural Rhön Park authorities and the "Gesellschaft für Schmetterlingsschutz e.V." - National Butterfly Protection Society, founded this trail in the Hartwald - between Oberelsbach and Oberwaldbehrungen - where you can observe around 30 different kinds of butterflies.
The billboards along the way, don't only tell you how to recognize the different kinds, but they also tell why butterflies are important for the ecology system.
The best time to go is on sunny late Spring and Summer days that hardly have any wind. That's when it will be most likely that you will see most of the different kinds of butterflies, either in the late morning or the early afternoon. The months of July and August are best.

The Butterfly Trail is located between the towns of Oberelsbach and Unterelsbach in the Bavarian Rhön Area.

For more info:
Haus der Langen Rhön
Unterelsbacher Straße 4
97656 Oberelsbach

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Phone: (0049-9774) 9102-60 Fax: -70
Other Contact: info@brrhoenbayern.de