Jelenia Góra and Szklarska Poreba [antikvár]

A LOOK INTO THE VALLEYThis is a sight best known to those daring hunters for diamond badges who in spring or autumn soar up in their gliders on a rising current of air and from high up in the skies look down on to this green and orange bowl of a valley. Thousands of glider pilots have attempted a prize-winning flight here, but not all of them have attained to the requíred heights. However, if they persevere, they may yet succeed in their aim for our mine of diamond badges remains open to all glider pilots and is likely to attract more and more of them in the future. Of course, we are only too well aware that a relatively small number of people are interested in gíiding. But you need not go up in a glider to notice that the district of Jelenia Góra - has the shape of a bowl. The millions of visitors who every year come to these parts no matter from which direction always descend on the valley from above, from one of the four ridges of the West Sudetes which, running perpendicularly to each other, fringe this beauti-ful vale.It is bounded on the south by the Karkonosze Mountains (which are alsó the boundary of Poland and the Odra catchment area), on the west by the Izerskie Mountains, on the north by the Kaczawskie and Oto-wiane (Lead) Mountains, and on the east by the Rudawy Janowickie Hills into which the valley intrudes in wide ramifications making way for railways.The topography of this region is due to a number of factors, the more significant being the inner cracks in the gránité block, the up and downcasts of the Tertiary period, and the various processes of erosion and weather-ing which affecting the pinkish porphyritic gránité more than the equigranular types of formation have shaped in the valley the semispherical tomnickie Hills. And so wherever you look, you can see tree-clad moun-