Mátraalja, on the edge of the village

Itinerary

• Roll along the access road of the railway station, then turn right onto Kossuth Lajos Street. Upon reaching the Saint Bertalan Church, turn right at the traffic light intersection towards Gyöngyössolymos. Immediately before the water tower, turn right onto Őrálló Street, then at the end turn left onto Benei Road (Route 24 leading to Mátrafüred). Continue on the bike path all the way to the Gyöngyössolymos junction, then turn left.
• Take a detour towards the Farkasmály wine cellar row.
• In Gyöngyössolymos, continue straight to the bus turning point, turn right there, then at the first junction keep left (Szabadság Road), then after crossing the narrow gauge railway track, turn right. Afterwards, proceed straight up the increasingly steep road, then turn left where the asphalt ends.
• On the vineyard path, continue straight towards Gyöngyösoroszi, then upon reaching the village, roll to the main street named after Kossuth Lajos and turn left. Upon returning to the boundary of Gyöngyös, turn right towards Szurdokpüspöki.
• In Gyöngyöspata, roll a little past the Selyp junction to reach the Kisboldogasszony Church, then return to the junction and turn right.
• In Szűcs, roll through the village on the main road; in Rózsaszentmárton, turn left in the village (towards Selyp), at the edge of the settlement, at the junction near Kotrónka continue straight (towards Selyp).
• In Petőfibánya, continue straight, then upon reaching the Zagyva River, turn left onto the dyke onto the riverside bike path. The bike path will soon be completed up to Hatvan, but currently (spring 2021) it ends under the M3 motorway, so turn left at the last junction before the overpass.
• In Hatvan, in the Nagygombos district, turn right at the intersection towards Hatvan. The road leads straight to Grassalkovich Castle.

Detailed description of the route

We start our tour from Gyöngyös – a town often considered the gateway to the Mátra, and probably the direction from which most people reach Mátraháza or Kékes as well. The border between the Great Plain and the Mátra provided a suitable habitat for the Avars who settled here around 700-800 AD. However, their enjoyment of the area's features was short-lived as the conquering Hungarians soon arrived: it was during this time that the ancestors of the Aba clan settled in the Mátra foothills (and the Hernád valley), who ruled the mountain range for a long time, and Aba Sámuel (1041-1044) even became king of the country, indicating that he may have been a close relative of Saint Stephen.

Visiting Bruno

After a small historical detour, let's explore the historic downtown of Gyöngyös! The tour starts at the railway station, less attractive point of the town, but just a few pedals later, we are at the Orczy Castle. At the base of the castle walls, the Mátravasút trains depart towards Mátrafüred and Szalajkaház located in the heart of the mountain range (after a short narrow-gauge train ride, you can even start the tour from Mátrafüred). Since the beginning of the 20th century, these small trains have transported wood harvested in the forests and stones mined in the mines – in the second half of the century increasingly tourists visiting the area.

The Orczy Castle has stood in the town since 1770, originally built as a hunting lodge by Baron Lőrinc Orczy. The family’s life was closely intertwined with the town’s life between the 18th and 20th centuries, so naturally, many legends are connected with the building: many people in Gyöngyös believe there are hidden doors, secret tunnels in the castle, an underground bunker under the garden, or that the fence is made from rifle barrels. The hunting lodge took its current form in 1824 after a reconstruction, and a quarter of a century later Görgey started the Spring Campaign from here. Since the late 1950s the manor house has been home to the Mátra Museum, so today anyone can enter for a ticket. It's worth visiting because you can meet Bruno, the 50,000-year-old woolly mammoth (well, just the skeleton), along with hunting history and local history exhibitions, including an experience space mainly designed for educational purposes.

Continuing towards the town center, two impressive church towers soon catch the eye. One of the towers of Saint Bertalan Church is even equipped with a panoramic lift for visitors, but there is a lot to see inside as well. The building itself, built on 13th-century foundations, is worth a Mass – though little remains of the 15th-century Gothic hall church, the 18th-century Baroque transformation created a monumental overall effect. (On the southern side of the sanctuary remains a Gothic-style baptismal font made of bronze, and on either side of the apse are still two large Gothic twin windows.) A special attraction is the church treasury, where there are goldsmith masterpieces, chasubles, and old books. The church has burned several times, most recently in the 1917 fire which caused severe damage to the entire town.

Starting north from Gyöngyös main square, we pass the old water tower of the town, which partly owes its existence to the mentioned fire, as the rebuilding of the town also involved the modernization of public utilities. The Gyöngyös water tower, built in 1926-27, guarantees healthy drinking water and storage of sufficient water available for firefighting. The circular building is topped by a water tank held by eight stone-clad reinforced concrete pillars that rise from the cylindrical ground floor mass, with the spiral staircase leading to the tank protruding from the wall. The industrial monument, located in a not very attractive environment, could be a real sight, but most people just pass by it.

From the water tower, head towards the main street of Mátra, the always busy Route 24 – fortunately, a bike path runs parallel to it all the way to Mátrafüred. Our tour leaves the recently renovated cycling path at the Solymosi junction, but before that, we make a detour to the Farkasmály wine cellars. The “land of wolves,” at the foot of Sár Hill, consists of walls made of andesite tuff ideal for deepening cellars, uniquely carved upward rather than downward, sloping outward. This is significant because carbon dioxide and liquids easily escape from the cellars, making them safe and easy to clean under proper ventilation. In the early 1800s, local (Gyöngyös) dignitaries were the first cellar owners; in the 19th century, harvest festivities and student May Day celebrations were held here, making it a popular local entertainment spot. During World War II, thousands of Gyöngyös refugees hid in the mountain, commemorated by a statue of the Virgin Mary by one of the bridges. Though not all cellars are operational today, many visitors are still attracted to the functioning wineries. A pleasant atmosphere greets visitors by the Mérges stream, where wine tastings are available both outside and inside the cellars.

Is there a Jesse nearby?

In Gyöngyössolymos, it's worth stopping by the village church for a few minutes: the tower is visibly much older than the rest of the building. The tower was built in Gothic style in the 14th century; in the early 18th century, a new nave with Baroque features was added (the original was destroyed during the Turkish era). A charming spot in the village is probably the most endearing small sacred building in the entire country. The little chapel called Jánoska stands at the southern end of the village, erected in the 18th century in honor of Saint John of Nepomuk by the village landlord, the Bishop of Eger, Count Károly Eszterházy. The tour, however, heads north towards the vineyards. We head to the part of the village called Fűtőház, its name hints that it used to be the center of the Solymosi narrow-gauge railway and the traction depot, and nearby a branch line led from the main line to the Monostor valley.

Climbing higher among vineyards and orchards, we also turn left where the rather poor quality asphalt road leads between neat rows. The Mátra wine region, stretching in a 15-20 kilometer band along the southern slopes of the namesake mountain range from the Zagyva to the Tarna rivers, is the second largest in Hungary. Among the grape varieties, besides traditional Italian Riesling, Leányka, and Muscat Ottonel, Szürkebarát (Pinot Gris), Sauvignon Blanc, and Chardonnay also produce excellent quality wines. The asphalt road eventually becomes a dirt road, which may be difficult to travel during rainy weather. (Those who prefer to skip this stretch can roll back from Gyöngyössolymos to Gyöngyös, turn right at the main square, and start towards Gyöngyöspata, reconnecting to the suggested route at the Gyöngyösoroszi junction.)

We leave Gyöngyösoroszi with a comfortable roll, then turn right onto the road running through Mátraalja. Our next stop is Gyöngyöspata, where it is worth stopping by the fenced church rising in the center of the village. The Kisboldogasszony Church's predecessor was a small Romanesque-style church in the 12th century, gradually expanded over the following centuries: sometimes a tower, a sacristy, or a sanctuary was added, and eventually extended to a three-nave church. Most alterations occurred in the 15th-16th centuries, so the building mainly bears Gothic features. Inside, a real rarity welcomes believers and visitors alike: a so-called Jesse altar – an eight-meter-high altar depicting Jesus' family tree growing from the body of the reclining Jesse, father of King David. In the center of the tree is a painting of the birth of Mary (according to the Gospel tradition, Mary is a descendant of King David); on the branches are Jesus' ancestors, prophets, and kings, and above the foliage sits Virgin Mary on the throne holding baby Jesus. The altar was made by Polish masters in the 1650s and is considered a true rarity.

Good luck!

In Gyöngyöspata, we roll back and forth towards the church over the 18th-century Baroque stone bridge of Danka stream, adorned with a statue of Saint John of Nepomuk. Leaving the village, we begin the roller-coaster ride towards the bank of the Zagyva: each of the next villages is separated by a hill. The following village is Szűcsi, reached by climbing the side of Kecske-kő and then rolling down. The settlement was briefly a real mining village, where Mátraalja lignite mining took place between 1954-69 in two mines. Lignite, belonging to the group of fossil coals, is the youngest and therefore has the lowest heating value – yet it is still worth mining and burning (to this day, lignite from the mines in Visonta and Bükkábrány supplies fuel to the Mátrai Power Plant in Visonta). Lignite mining in Mátraalja began in the 1890s and really took off in the 1910s; the last mine closed in 1969. The settlement is also connected to the darkest chapter of lignite mining in Mátraalja: in 1959, a fire broke out in Mine X, claiming 31 miners’ lives.

The neighboring Rózsaszentmárton – to get through the village, another hill must be overcome – was fortunate to be the center of local mining for a long time. Already between the two World Wars, seven sloping mines operated here, from which lignite was initially transported to the railway station in Apci by horse-drawn carts, then by 1920, a cable car line was built between the two villages, drastically speeding up and simplifying transportation. In the 1930s, the mine provided livelihood for 400 families, and thanks to it, there was a miners’ canteen, thermal bath, medical practice, consumer cooperative, and cultural center in the village – not a given between the wars. In the 1960s, lignite demand declined, and mining ceased in the last Rózsaszentmárton mine in 1968, with only a local small museum and the Kotrónka monument on the village border remembering it. Kotrónka is a huge mining machine placed at the road junction at the southern edge of the village; its name shows how close the local people felt to the inanimate actors of the mining industry.

For Petőfibánya – for variety's sake – we climb another hill, then roll down a real serpentine onto the settlement. First-time visitors may suddenly feel at the last corner unsure if they've ended up in Komló or Oroszlány – there are residential blocks and garages visible both to the right and left. Petőfibánya owes its existence to lignite: in the early 1940s, shafts began being deepened at the former Pernyepuszta, and a nearby power plant began construction in Lőrinc. The war halted development, but production started in 1948, and the Mátravidéki Villamos Erőmű power plant could also begin operation in 1949. A short railway was built from Selyp to Petőfibánya, and the mining company established a machine plant here. Today there is no mine or machine plant, only housing estates and a neat little mining machine displayed along the road recall the mining stopped in the 1960s.

Adventures by the Zagyva River

From Petőfibánya to the bank of the Zagyva, we proceed along the road parallel to the former railway (whose railway bridge is still visible), then turn left onto the dyke bike path that leads straight to Hatvan. The bike path ends under the M3 motorway, and although construction continues, currently (spring 2021) at Nagygombos, you must switch onto a low-traffic road running for a few hundred meters that leads directly to the Grassalkovich Castle. The impressive building was built by Antal Grassalkovich (I) between 1754 and 1757 on the site of medieval castle ruins. During World War II, the abandoned castle's furnishings were looted and destroyed, its ancient trees and ornamental shrubs cut down. The Germans established a Gestapo center here, stealing valuable items found in the castle. After the front, the castle served as a field hospital, then a secondary school, and later a hospital, accompanied by continuous dilapidation as with many other valuable castles. The castle currently hosts the Széchenyi Zsigmond Hunting Museum on three levels (basement, ground floor, upper floor), with permanent interactive multimedia exhibitions on natural science, hunting, fishing, and cultural history. The displays present the traditions and achievements of Hungarian hunting, hunting skills, and wildlife management, the natural background of wildlife management, the most important habitats and game species of the Carpathian Basin, the social embedding of wildlife management, its cultural role, as well as the traditions and present of fishing and angling.

Leaving the castle, the railway station is just a few hundred meters away, but two curiosities appear before: one is an entirely unrealistic bike bridge, and underneath, a cyclist's "adventure park" in the Zagyva floodplain, consisting of a wooden path elevated above the ground, where even an experienced cyclist seems unlikely to balance along. Unfortunately, no opportunity to try it was available, as it is only open from April to September according to posted information. Not far away, in the People's Park, two locomotives (520.075 and 411.264) are on display. These steam engines waited for their fate for a long time on a secluded track of the nearby railway station’s heating shed, until the Hungarian Railway Vehicle Preservation Association restored them to display condition. Both have special histories related to World War II: the 520 series steam engines were manufactured in the Third Reich as 'war locomotives' designed with simple structures and materials for only a few years of operation. After the war, many were in operation all over Europe. Interestingly, 100 of these locomotives came to Hungary from the Soviet Union in 1963, where they had been working until then. Railway slang called this type the Khrushchev diesel because diesel locomotives should have been bought by the early 1960s. The 411 locomotive is also a war steam engine, but it served on the Allies' side as type S160 of the United States Army Transportation Corps (USATC). The MÁV bought 510 units at a favorable price from the locomotives remaining in Europe after the war out of a series of 2,120 units in total. The last of the so-called Truman machines were scrapped in the early 1980s, most having served 20-25 years on Hungarian railways. A few remaining examples wait for visitors to Hatvan with a semaphore company in the People's Park.

From the People's Park, only a few hundred meters remain to see trains still operating today or even to board them. Those wishing to return to the starting point of the 51-kilometer tour can take trains heading towards Eger here and reach Gyöngyös within just half an hour with a transfer at Vámosgyörk.