Beautiful view: Odvas-Farkas loop above Budaörs

Itinerary:

• We start from the bus stop on Kisfaludy Street, following the P marking uphill.
• After a few hundred meters, turn right onto Kőláb Street, then Kőszikla Street leads to the built stairs up to Kő Hill.
• After the Kő Hill detour, we continue on the P marking, which passes briefly between houses, then enters a suddenly narrowing, bushy-wooded valley on the side of Odvas Hill.
• Upon reaching the ridge, we do not immediately turn onto the P+ hiking trail leading to the summit near Farkas Hill, but look right into the zone of the Piktortégla caves.
• The next stop is the nearby rocky peak of Farkas Hill, reached via the P+ hiking trail after about 600 meters of walking.
• If we want to walk a bit more on the strictly protected summit, the short Gubóvirág educational trail route offers the only legal possibility.
• Continuing on the P+ path, we descend towards Budaörs, then in the settlement cross over to the starting point via Víg Street.

Detailed description of the hike:

The starting point is the Kisfaludy Street bus stop in Budaörs. There is good parking nearby, and you can get here quickly by bus from the capital. The P marked hiking trail starts from the bus stop along Kisfaludy Street. After a few hundred meters, we arrive at the foot of Kő Hill rising on the right, here we add a loop to our hike up to the summit. Kőláb Street and then Kőszikla Street lead up to the built stairs to the hill. At the top, we almost bump into a small chapel built next to a rock, near which stands the stone hill cross. The first stop of our hike is always quite busy, especially in good weather, as it is easy to reach, and the view is already magnificent here—especially towards Budapest.

After the small hiking loop of Kő Hill, we descend back to the P marked hiking trail, which continues briefly between houses, then enters a suddenly narrowing, bushy-wooded valley on the side of Odvas Hill. Here comes the next detour. The hill could legally be ascended on a nature trail since we are in a strictly protected natural area. However, after completing the hike, information arrived that the Odvas Hill nature trail probably does not officially exist, despite being shown on online hiking maps and several printed hiking maps, and its plan can even be found online here. If so, due to the lack of a marked hiking path, it is legally forbidden to enter the strictly protected area of Odvas Hill. The situation is further complicated by the lack of signs indicating the strictly protected natural area at the hill's base, and there is no marked nature trail on site either.

As long as the situation is unclear, the detour to Odvas Hill cannot be recommended, even though it would be particularly exciting. The nature trail would otherwise present geological curiosities, but the remnants of algal turf and the Neptuni slips filled with marl only slightly excite us. Therefore, we can almost completely devote our attention to the panorama opening up from the summit and the fresh spring flowers adorning the hillside steppe meadow.

We continue our hike on the P marked path leading through the narrow valley towards the upper spheres of Farkas Hill. We continue climbing to the ridge, but when we reach it, we do not immediately turn onto the P+ hiking trail leading to the summit near Farkas Hill, but look into the zone of the Piktortégla caves.

In this area, there are no gorges or significant caves, but there are the Piktortégla caves unique to this area. These are partly collapsed tunnels where local mining families extracted white clay from the end of the 1800s to produce brick-shaped pieces called pictorial bricks or painter bricks.

After exploring the Piktortégla cave, the next stop is the bare summit of Farkas Hill, which we reach along the P+ hiking trail after about 600 meters of walk. On the 343-meter-high summit, covered with rock grass and meadows, several well-trodden paths invite strolls. However, the hill is a strictly protected natural area, and as such, can only be trodden on marked hiking trails. Besides the P+ hiking trail, the short Gubóvirág educational trail looping around the summit offers a legal option.

On top of Farkas Hill stood a special memorial until a particularly stormy weekend in March 2023: a V-shaped glider wing commemorating that Hungarian gliding began here in 1929. (In the difficult early days, every tenth take-off ended in a crash.)

A beautiful panorama opens all around from the summit. To the south, Odvas Hill extends like a snail shell; to the north, the serene bare heads of Szekrényes Hill and Szállás Hill beckon—the latter two hills are forbidden fruit as they are in a strictly protected area and no marked hiking trails lead to them.

After filling up with the view, we continue on the P+ trail, descending towards Budaörs, then at the bottom in the settlement, cross over to the starting point via Víg Street. In the last meters, we also visit the small Calvary Hill bathing in the slanting light of sunset, from where the Kő Hill climbed at the start of the hike with the chapel and cross can be seen well.