Forest walk to Fehérkő Castle from Kereki

Itinerary:

• We depart northward from the bus stop.
• The ZL trail leads from Kereki to Fehérkő Castle, then continues a few hundred meters further south along the ridge.
• From the ridge, we return to Kereki via an unmarked forestry road.
• The already familiar ZL signs guide us back to the bus stop.

Detailed description of the route:

We start from the southern end of Kereki heading north. Turning left on the road leading to Amáliapuszta belonging to the settlement, we follow the ZL trail. On the gently sloping road, we cross the newly forming Kőröshegyi-Séd stream, surrounded by charming willow groves and valley meadows. We quickly leave the houses behind and turn left at the village-edge playground towards the wooded hillside. Although Fehérkő Castle towers directly above us, the steep drop is bypassed on the left by the path, which climbs the ridge on the gentler eastern side through a hornbeam-oak forest. The path is strenuous in places, but wooden railings provide assistance next to the path; several gentler tracks also lead towards the ridge within the forest.

At the summit, a resting place welcomes you with an information board telling the story of the Somogy castles. To our right, the ruins of Kereki Castle appear above the ring-shaped trenches. Crossing the steep trenches, we reach the colorful, crumbling walls built of mixed brick and sandstone. The castle was evidently repaired and reinforced multiple times. The severely ruined remains were saved at the last moment in the early 1960s. By then, most of the village inhabitants had removed its stones and bricks, some for building the church in the early 19th century, and a nearby hunting lodge also benefited from its decay - yet according to unearthed decorated fireplace tiles, the fortress was once artistically adorned. First mentioned in the 14th century, it later fell due to the Turk threat after eventful centuries. During the Ottoman incursion, Hungarian troops blew it up in 1544 to prevent the pagans from settling. The surviving walls, with centuries of erosion and protruding harder rock structures, lend an ancient atmosphere to the ruin.

We continue along the ZL trail on the ridge southward through an oak forest for a short time. A few hundred meters further, a forestry road turns down the valley on the left at the border between the oak and the young regrowth forest. The young forest growing after clear-cutting is protected by a game fence against the browsing of deer, a significant factor in this region. The bushy, gentle forest offers excellent shelter to abundant wildlife: deer, roe deer, and wild boars live their relatively undisturbed everyday life in the remaining patches of the Somogy wilderness. The unmarked path descends back toward the Kőröshegyi-Séd stream with increasing steepness, which we reach after just under a kilometer. Emerging from the oak forest at the base of the hillside, we arrive at the streamside meadows. We still step above the level of the streamside trees onto the grassy area, where the rooftops and church tower of Kereki appear, and in the distance, the motorway viaduct dominating the gentle valley comes into view.

The concrete monument gracefully carries the noisy traffic across the peaceful valley basin from a respectable distance like a slender ribbon. Viewed from the valley floor, the bridge structure looks conspicuously oversized, as if arching from one hilltop to another. According to the official version, the population and natural values were to be protected by this nearly 2-kilometer-long structure high above the valley, which was not only immense in size but also in cost. Moreover, its construction was an exceptional professional challenge, where the 80-meter pillars were raised using a sliding formwork solution, and the roadway was assembled from prefabricated elements produced in advance on both sides. Thus, the largest bridge in our country was built as a gem of Lankás County.

Crossing diagonally left across the hillside meadow, we cut through the road ribbon, which gently blends into the patchwork of riparian willow groves in the valley floor. After a short but atmospheric section, we return to the edge of Amáliapuszta, where we reach the asphalt road from the start of the tour, closing the loop, and turn right to follow the ZL trail back to the village.