Hiking Trails for Tourists in the "Chełmy" Landscape Park - Assessment of Their Route and Infrastructure Development

Introduction. The objective of the work was to assess the development of hiking trails for tourists and their infrastructure in the "Chełmy" Landscape Park in Lower Silesia. Material and methods. The analysis concerned a network of tourist trails whose coherence and shape were evaluated based on the indices derived from the graph theory. Also the correspondence between the names given to some trails with the tourist attractions accessible via such trails was assessed, and their number was compared to the length of the relevant trails. The analysis of the development of infrastructure for hiking tourists was conducted based on the results of local stocktaking and determination of tourist traffic density. Results. The obtained results show that the network of trails across the Park is quite well developed and coherent, despite the diversity of infrastructural development. The correspondence between the names of trails with their tourist attractions was confirmed with some reservations. Conclusions. Diverse trails in the studied area should be integrated into a coherent network by their similar development level, and in particular by introducing uniform marking standards. It would be also worth providing better access to some attractions for hiking tourists by introducing appropriate access routes.