Along waters, deep in forests

Itinerary

• We start from the bus turning point in Rábagyarmat, then follow the S marker along Óvégi Street to leave the settlement.
• We continue on the S marker until the K marker joining from Hegyhátszentmárton, from where we follow the K marker first west, then south, crossing the Lugos Creek valley to Kondorfa.
• From the center of Kondorfa, we follow Alvég Street to get to the bus turning point.

Detailed description of the route

Adventures along the Rába

We start from Rábagyarmat, a village with a valley settlement pattern located along the Rába River, which was connected to the neighboring village Rátót by fords and boats until the 20th century. This area, inhabited since Roman times, likely belonged to the Kürt-Gyarmat tribe area at the time of the Hungarian conquest. Documents first mention the village in 1157 as a possession of the Germanújvár Benedictines, but in the founding charter of the Szentgotthárd Cistercian Order in 1183, it already appears as their estate. On the village's high point stands the church dedicated to Saint Lambert of Maastricht, parts of which from the Middle Ages are now used as transepts and side chapels.

The village's half-timbered, clipped gable, 'smoke kitchen' style folk house, built from pine logs in 1850, is near the tour's starting point and welcomes visitors with authentic furnishings, a drawer chest, painted chest, and an oven with a firewood bench. Rábagyarmat was a popular holiday spot between the two world wars; strict border control in the 1950s abruptly ended leisure time by the Rába.

We leave the village eastward along the S route, with our first stop at the Saint Ladislaus spring. The monument visible here was erected in 1939 by the local Frontline Warriors Association with help from Rábagyarmat emigrants in America at the former Saint Spring. Its central element shows King Saint Ladislaus bringing water from a rock. To the right are a helmet, sword, and the year 1918. On the left column's coat of arms, the inscription reads: 'Built by the Rábagyarmat frontline warriors in 1939 with voluntary contributions and the help of our American blood for the greater glory of God and the homeland.' The names of Rábagyarmat residents who died in World War I are inscribed on the two outer columns.

This segment of our route runs near the wildly meandering Rába River. Hungary's third longest and one of the most natural rivers (188 km within Hungary) meanders freely for over half of its length from Alsószölnök to Sárvár, providing ideal conditions for observing nature around water.

The natural vegetation of the Rába valley once consisted of floodplain gallery forests, bog forests, shrub willows, marshes, and marsh-meadow mosaics. These absorbed and filtered the floodwaters while enriching the soils. After floods, new riverbanks form with muddy-sand vegetation consisting of plants like common reed grass and broadleaf bitter grass. Shrubby guests may appear on gravel bars occasionally, such as narrow-leaved, hoary willow and vertebral shrub willow communities. On the riverbank zone, we mostly find almond-leaved willow and perhaps basket binder grass.

Moving away from the immediate shore, we can encounter silver shining white willow, black poplar, resinous alder named after its sticky leaf stalk, and velvet ash communities. In the shrub layer of black poplar gallery forests, dark blue berry Cornelian cherry or red-fruited single-seed hawthorn may be discovered. Among herbaceous plants, showy representatives include ribbon grass, yellow-flowered marsh iris, clingy bedstraw that easily sticks to clothes, and the early spring yellow-flowered celandine. An interesting feature of softwood gallery forests is the presence of climbing lianas and herbaceous plants. Among woody stems, Clematis vitalba is common; among semicaducous shrubs, the red-berried nightshade bittersweet; among herbaceous plants, white funnel-shaped bellflower and lampion-like hop are frequent.

Hardwood gallery forests are formed by pedunculate oak, European ash, and velvet ash, with patches of black walnut; common shrubs include red-berried buckthorn, red-fruited Cornelian cherry, and violet-black dogwood. The herb layer features early spring bulbous, tuberous, rhizomatous plants such as celandine, snowdrop, and hollow corydalis with purple or whitish spur inflorescences.

The animal life along the Rába includes the vividly colored small copper butterfly with sharp violet or blue interference colors and the little ringed plover nesting on sparsely vegetated gravel bars, feeding on aquatic arthropods and snails. We may also meet white and black storks, and the other characteristic but less numerous breeder of the Rába, the wagtail that waddles densely on the bars or glides low over water. The kingfisher, shining in blue-green, chestnut, yellow, and black colors, nests in the riverbanks. This bird is colloquially called the 'bee bird' because it enjoys eating bees, wasps, and other flying insects. Interestingly, it removes the sting and venom gland of bees and wasps before swallowing them during flight.

Our path continues past the meadow next to Császártanya, where in early spring local children call the yellow-petaled, stemless primroses 'whistling flowers.' Continuing, we see the former Németfalu manor on the hilltop to our right, protected by old trees.

By bypassing the manor's hill, we reach the K marker. We walk west of Hegyhátszentmárton, one of the defining villages of the historical Rába region—following the K marker to the left, with minimal detour, you can even explore the village. It was named after its patron saint, Saint Martin. The first written mention by the Vasvár chapter in 1338 was as 'Zenthmarton.' In 1417, the Ivánczy family already had a Renaissance-style noble manor on the high bank near the Rába, allowing river observation. The fortified building was attacked multiple times by neighboring feuding families, the Marácis and the Nádasdys. While the castle's destruction is attributed to Turkish devastation in 1588, the destruction of the village's church is linked to the Tatar raids of 1690.

The floodplain enclosed by the bends of the Rába at Hegyhátszentmárton and the Rába area is called 'hurok' or 'öntés,' but in the past was also called 'szeg.' During the Kuruc wars, the 'Szentmártoni szeg' was cut off from the village by a new riverbed of the Rába, creating a meadow called 'szakadát' or 'szakaszték.' Water mills operated on the Rába and Lugos Creek already in the Middle Ages, in the 14th century.

In the picturesque valley of Lugos Creek

Continuing, we encounter many orchid species on the meadow below Pityerdomb, named after the common forest bedstraw: in spring the purple-colored marsh orchid and the smaller dark reddish smelly orchid, in summer the loose raceme greenish-yellow spiked two-leaved liverwort. The gem of the meadow is the yellow-green, two-leaved slender-spored spikemoss encircling a snake-like raised fertile gap, a class of native ferns. Only here in Őrség does the crescent-shaped, sitting-leaf little moonwort belonging to the spikemoss family occur.

Villages stood in the picturesque Lugos Creek valley already in the Middle Ages, one of the oldest called Vásárhely. This is not accidental, as the grass-rich, widening valley bottoms served not only as resting places for herds driven to markets but also as market towns themselves. From the conquest to the middle of the Árpád era, the villagers served as border guards, protecting the trade route passing here between the Rába and Szala guards. Their military role gradually diminished parallel to the settlement of the Cistercians as the border line shifted westward.

The trade route crossing the Lugos Creek valley toward the former Regede (today Radkersburg) on the Mura was also called the German road. In the Angevin period, in 1354, confiscations of oxen used for wine transport were recorded between Lugosvásárhely and Kedhely (today Kethely). At the beginning of the 14th century, a miller named Chenk already operated a watermill here; the place is still called Cenkmolnár after the houses built nearby.

The fate of the former villages along Lugos Creek: Lugos, Miske, Cenkfalva was sealed during the Turkish raid of 1588. Instead, Lugosfalva was established somewhat higher on a ridge in the 17th century, but by the second half of the 19th century, only a manor remained of it. The simply named village Lugos was famous for its tavern. Interestingly, the old local names reflected the typical natural conditions at the time of their founding, thus serving an informative and orienting role (e.g., Nádasd referred to reeds, Lugos to rising or bushy vegetation).

The oak-studded valley of Lugos Creek provided ideal wooded pastures for cattle for centuries. Its wet meadow's jewel is the trumpet-shaped, vivid yellow-petaled yellow lilyflower, blossoming from May until mid-summer and easily noticeable. In the deeper parts, we can already see large raceme-flowered white valerian examples from afar. Approaching Kondorfa, in the Máli meadow we can admire the sky-blue flowers of horned gentians blooming from mid-summer, and near the rushes, the large fire butterflies shining in bright fire red on the upper side of their forewings.

We arrive in Kondorfa from Alvég. The village's founding is dated to the early 13th century, and its first residents were settlers led by the Szentgotthárd Cistercian Abbey to clear forests around Lugos Creek. The Cistercians owned the settlement for a long time; it was already mentioned under the name Gardunfalva (later Kondorfalva) in a 1350 charter. After the Szentgotthárd battle in 1664, many fled from the neighboring Huszás area to Bucsa Hill on the edge of the village.

The settlement parts here are called 'végs' (ends) rather than districts (Fővég, Alvég). Walking along Kondorfa's main street, Alvég, we finish our tour at the bus turning point next to the municipality, at the Vadkörte inn where we can stay the night or have a meal.