What happened in Bakony?

-3°C, chilly wind, overcast sky, muddy roads, huge meadows, and the unique scent of growing wood garlic. It’s high time I shared my experiences about Bakony with you!

In my previous post I was complaining about bad weather conditions and the lack of hiking companions. To tell you the truth I was thoughtless. I made it on Saturday and two of my friends joined me. Success!

Let’s start from the beginning. I always write the “how to get there” part in my posts; however, I don’t give you instructions about where to find Hungarian bus or railway schedule. Problem solved! In the sidebar of the blog (under the slideshow) you can find both of them. Click on the links; the websites are in English.  

This time, we took a bus to Herend, but it was crowded and slow. If you take my advice, you would rather go by train. Taking a bus was also disadvantageous, because the first trail we went on with the guys started from the railway station, so we had to cross the village, looking for the proper way. But that’s a feature of hiking, right?

Contrast

Bakony is a quite big mountainous region in Hungary, so you can hike in it for days. We didn’t have that much time, so we did a 26km hike. We set off from Herend and arrived to Városlőd via Csehbánya (Ger: Böhmischhütten) which is a small village with less than 300 inhabitants. It was like a ghost town; silent, motionless. The weather was chilly, but I didn’t expect any snow. Unfortunately there were snowy trails and areas covered by blanket of snow. Nature was still asleep. (Spring, where are you?)

What's your impression?

We were halfway on the trail when we ended up on a deforestation area where workers left only some slender trees. This big open space seemed strange to me, but there was something beautiful in it.

Another spectacular part was the valley of Torna-creek. We had to cross riffles several times and this made the hike more exciting and demanding, since the valley was the last part of the hike. Additional info: it is easy to get lost in this hike… Some hiking signs are missing because of the recent deforestation. Bakony is beautiful, but it could have been more colorful when we visited it. 

Torna-creek

I am really looking forward to spring, maybe it brings less rain and more sunshine.