At the northern gateway of the Börzsöny wilderness

Itinerary:

• We start from the narrow-gauge railway terminus on the P trail, which follows the nature trail route along Strázsa Street, then through the holiday resort area into the forest.
• At the top of Strázsa Hill, we branch off to the P◼ trail, and together with the nature trail we descend into the Csarna Valley towards the Feketevölgy Pension.
• From the P◼ trail, we turn onto the valley floor on the K trail to the spring of Fekete-kút, which is marked on the tree trunk by the K● sign to help find the location.
• On the other side of the valley, we climb up on the side of Godó Castle on the Z◼ trail.
• We join the descending Z trail on the side of Godó Castle, which takes us back down to the meeting of the Csarna Valley and Kemence Creek valleys, and back to Kemence.

About the hike in detail:

Kemence-Csarnapuszta

We start our hike at the terminus of the narrow gauge railway hugging the foothill forest at the edge of Kemence. Even if we do not take advantage of the travel opportunity offered by the small train, it is definitely worth peeking into the starting point of the railway network built for timber transport in the Central Börzsöny, where in addition to the historical curiosities of the local narrow-gauge railway, we can see museum-quality wagons, locomotives, and railway equipment collected from different points of the country.

In their heyday, the Börzsöny logging railways networked the mountain range with nearly 200 km of tracks by the early 20th century. To reach previously inaccessible places - including the very top of Börzsöny - the tracks were laid with excellent engineering using numerous bridges and embankments. The trains were pulled uphill empty by horse or locomotive, then loaded with wood and sent back down to loading places by gravity. Accordingly, the tracks were designed with a nearly uniform gradient, requiring economic braking handled in many places by pre-installed sand spreading boards. The Kemence branch here started construction in 1910, gradually advancing into the mountain range's interior. In the mid-20th century, trucks took over the role of railways in forestry, leading to a significant reduction in rail timber transport by the late 1960s and track dismantling. In the 1990s, economic reasons caused the permanent closure of the Kemence line, with the 1995 and 1999 floods in the Csarna Valley delivering the final blow, damaging or destroying bridges and embankments on the upper sections. The Friends of the Narrow-Gauge Railways Association renovated the lower Kemence Valley section in the early 2000s, mainly by manual labor. They reached the Feketevölgy Pension 4 km from the village, where since 2013 a small train operating regularly on weekends transports tourists.

On the P trail, leaving the railway behind and crossing Kemence’s holiday area, we enter the forest. Looking back on the gently ascending asphalt road, we can see the village center and the area around the Catholic church.

Kemence remained inhabited even during the Turkish occupation and became the seat of Hont County in the second half of the 18th century. Its notable sight, the former county hall opposite the Catholic church, was built then, housing the county administration and judiciary. In 1782, the infamous trial of the "cannibal gypsies" took place here, when the increasing lawlessness in the area was blamed on the wandering Roma forcibly settled there, setting an example on this vulnerable group. Nearly 200 people were accused during the trial through torture of not only theft and robbery but murder, with the lack of corpus delicti explained by cannibalism. Using medieval deterrent methods and with local Roma assistance, forty convicts were executed before the authorities ordered the cessation of further executions. On the 200th anniversary of this sad event, a memorial column was erected on the hillside above Csarna-puszta, barely one kilometer from our route.

In the forests of Strázsa Hill

At the boundary of the resort area, we enter a mixed oak forest. The area managed by Ipoly Erdő Zrt. made the route even more interesting with a ten-station nature trail introducing the local tree stock. Along the gently sloping route starting from Lengyel Forest, passing through the top of Strázsa Hill and into the steep Csarna Valley, the information boards show wet habitats, maple-oak groves, pine forests, deadwood, and beech groves, and experts also provide insight into the life of the local game animals.

In the clearing cut into the wooded side of Strázsa Hill, we can see strange rusty iron gates one after another. In this area, which has experienced harsher winters before, a ski slope was installed during the development of the holiday resort to boost tourism. The low hillside is not snow-reliable at all, so the rusty turnaround wheel of the out-of-use cable car is increasingly hard to see in the bushes.

The P trail gently joins a contour-running forestry road, where for a short section, leaving the nature trail, we detour sharply left back onto the P◼ trail. The path reaches a rocky, rubble-strewn section on the edge of the sharply incised Csarna Creek valley. In the increasingly steep hillside appear beeches favoring cooler, damper climates, marking a drastically changing environment. At a beech logging area, we overlook the densely forested, steeply cut-in Csarna Valley. Here we reach the gateway to the Börzsöny wilderness.

In the Csarna Creek valley

Arriving at the valley bottom, we return to civilization. We cross an asphalt road leading to the Feketevölgy Pension at the small railway terminus. The accommodation offering potentials of a lung sanatorium provides services for those escaping city noise.

Leaving civilization behind, a few hundred meters further we enter the shady forest of the rocky creek valley. From the P◼ trail, we turn onto the K trail along the valley floor, where a few hundred meters past the former railway track we arrive at the managed spring of Fekete-kút; spotting the K● sign on the tree trunk ensures we don't miss the location. Along the cracks, percolating mountain water surfaces here filtered clean through rock debris. Between steep dropping rocky walls, the trees must stretch high competing for light, forming a closed, dark forest with straight branches reminiscent of cathedral vaults reaching into the sky. Debris spread by floods along the flat sediment cut-in creek bed shows traces here and there of the former timber-transport narrow-gauge railway route, which together with the hiking trail disappears into the depth of the dense forest.

If we continued here, we would only get out of the Csarna valley via a wide hour-long climb leading to Salgó Castle, or even longer hikes leading to Csóványos or Nagy-Hideg Hill. We therefore turn back on the K trail and climb steeply to the right at the Feketevölgy Pension on the Z◼ trail. The mountain side guarded by old beeches and oaks charges an entrance fee; in just a few hundred meters walk, we gain over 100 meters of elevation.

After leaving the deep valley, the landscape transforms: turning from the steep mountainside onto a flat ridge, we arrive in an oak forest with mossy ground. The drastic change in atmosphere can clearly be attributed to morphology and subsequent zoned vegetation. The sunny mountainside also feels much more like home to grazing animals; with a little luck at the reserve border, we can see deer, roe deer, wild boar, or even a mouflon flock descending from the rocky slopes.

In the pleasant oak forest, we switch to the Z trail and descend along the increasingly gentle ridge. Next to a concrete elevation that is a key point in mapping the mountain range, we arrive at a wide meadow at the meeting of the Csarna and Kemence creeks valleys. Exiting onto the asphalt road, we cross Kemence Creek and then walk down next to the Kemence youth camp and the beach, returning to the increasing presence of civilization. To unwind, we can take a dip according to our wishes in the cooling pool of the Kemence beach hidden among the forested slopes, enjoy an ice cream at the buffet, or simply stroll into the village along the path by the creek.