Great hike around Simonfa and Kaposgyarmat

Itiner

• From the bus stop, head east along Dózsa György Street.
• You will reach the houses of the village, then turn right on the K sign.
• At the crossroads on Sipos Hill, follow the Z+ sign.
• On the Z● sign we visit the Kaposgyarmati calcareous tuff gorge.
• Crossing the Surján stream, turn left on the highway and follow the Z◼ sign.
• At the bend in the road, continue straight ahead on the Z sign to the pastures near Simonfa.
• Keep straight onabove Simonfa and take the S sign to the bus stop at the edge of the village.

Detailed description of the hike

Simonfa

The area of the village was inhabited in the Bronze Age, and its name was given by the former owner, Mrs. Simonv and the word 'falva'. It was first mentioned in 1421 in a charter as Symonfalwa, when King Sigismund donated the estates of János Illyemindszenti to the Tamási family. According to the 1660 register of deeds of servitude, it was part of the castle of Siglighet. From the bus stop, head east along Dózsa György Street, which will soon take you to the village's backyard.Then turn right on the K sign and climb up Ady Endre Street to the first hill on the tour. At the end of the climb, the church of the Last Supper stands on the right. The single nave Roman Catholic church, important for the townscape and history, was built in 1803 by the landowner Miklós Somssich Sárdi. The Way of the Cross in the churchyard is the work of the woodcarver István Bakai, winner of the Antal Kapoli Prize. At the foot of the church stands the Silver Lime Keyhouse, renovated in 2021. In the courtyard of the porch, maintained by the Meteor Nature Tourism Association, you can rest on benches and enjoy a beautiful view of the Zselic slopes.

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Soon the houses are left behind, and you're on a loess path up to the Great Hill. The loess is formed on the southern edge of the Pleistocene ice sheet on the cold steppe, mainly from quartz grains.It is a calcareous, unstratified sediment of coarse rocky silt formed by quartz grains, transported and spread by the wind. In the Szekszárd area, the so called "Szekszárd. This is due to the fact that the fallen dust was deposited on grassy wasteland and bound among the vegetation. Its vertical capillary system allows it to stand in steep walls and its characteristic shape is mainly shaped by precipitation. The loess paths are formed by the trampling of vehicles, people and animals, which breaks up and loosens the loess.the original structure of the surface of the loess, so that the upper layer is easily carried away by the water, cutting into the whole. In the walls of the groove, there are beautiful loess dolls, which are limestone outcrops of very varied shapes. In Hungary, they are mainly found in Outer Somogy and Tolna, but also in the Eastern Bakony, for example. During their formation, rainwater dissolves calcium carbonate in the soil by means of carbon dioxide and root acids leached from the soil.calcium carbonate and slowly transports it to the deeper layers, where the lime is re-extracted - now in the form of loess balls. The precipitation sometimes starts at the surface of cavities in the loess, so that the loess doll becomes hollow. If there is debris in the cavity, the doll will make a rattling sound when shaken.

Faizo

Emerging from the free-standing rooted trees, heading south past the buildings of Simonfai-bush, turn left onto the asphalt road in an area called Faizó. Woodcutting was once a manorial grant, whereby a serf received wood from the landlord's forest. For fuel, they were mainly given dead and dry wood, but if this was scarce, they could also take home live wood. The landlord could only use building timber to repair roofs, windows and doors.and tool-wood for repairing carts, ploughs and wagons. There was a severe penalty for felling timber in excess of the specified quantity and outside the prescribed cutting period. In exchange for the allowance, the serfs were obliged to cut wood for the landlord and then transport it to the designated place. Cutting the wood was mainly the job of the mercenaries, while the hauling was done by the serfs.

Conkolyos

After the turnstile, following the forest lane, you arrive at the Konkolyos vineyard. Seeded concoly was once a common weed, its small black seeds were difficult to clean out of the grain and, when eaten, caused severe poisoning. Today, however, it has become very scarce due to the use of pesticides and is therefore protected. Its scientific name (Agrostemma githago) is Greek for field crown, which refers to the 'use' of the flowering shoots of the plant. Its pink flowers are highly decorative. Its native habitat may have been the Eastern Mediterranean, but it spread throughout Europe in antiquity and by the early modern period it had spread to North America and Australia. It is mentioned in several places in the Bible, for example in chapter 13 of the Gospel of Matthew. "He who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world; the good seed is the sons of the kingdom of God; the tares are the sons of the wicked. And the enemy that soweth the concolor is the devil; and the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. Therefore as the concolor is gathered and burned, so shall the end of the world be."

The species is one of the best known examples of cultural revolution: its anti-sprouting properties allow wheat to grow taller on concave fields. It also has a developmental rhythm similar to that of cereals, germinating only on bare (cultivated) soil, sprouting and maturing at the same time as wheat. The evolution can be seen in the 4-5-toothed cotyledons. In the crop, the teeth may open only slightly, keeping the seeds closed until threshing, to be taken again by the next year's seed.

Calcareous soufflés in the grip of the plains

Through the silver lime-beech of the Balla top to the crossroads of the Siposfollowing the Z+ and then the Z● signs to the Kaposgyarmati calcareous tuff gorge hidden in the forest. This small gorge was carved into the sediments covering the area by an intermittent tributary of the Surján stream during the Quaternary uplift of the Zselic. The surface is covered in places by 10 m thick loess and other rocks, underlain by late MioceneThe sediment of the shoreline zone of Lake Pannon, which was upwelled here during the late Miocene. These more cemented layers of Pannonian sandstone slowed down the flow of the stream tributary valley.the tributary of the stream, so that the waters flowing in the riverbed pass through to form a small waterfall. The water droplets on the rocks indicate freshwater limestone formation that is still active today. The small stalactite-like coatings are formed as precipitation seeping down the sandstone, which becomes slightly acidic in the soil, slowly dissolves the carbonate in the rock and forms aThe lime transported precipitates on the surface of the sheets and along the cracks in the rock. The small canyon is also home to the cool, humid climate of the gully, which is characterised by the presence of theThey are also known to be a natural habitat for the mosses, which, during their life cycle, remove carbon dioxide from the water, helping to precipitate the calcium carbonate that builds up the freshwater limestone. However, as this process is still slow, we need to be very careful to protect these freshwater calcareous formations. In addition to the waterfall, the other characteristic feature of the gorge is a dark-coloured travertino (or lime tuff) rock called Buffalo Head.

Through Kaposgyarmat to Cserénfa

From the gorge we start a steep descent that continues until the Surján stream. After crossing it, turn left on the highway and follow the Z◼ sign to the bend in the road, from where you continue straight ahead on the Z sign. After the hunting lodge, you can see the landscape from the shade of a treeThen continue straight on through the gate of a picket fence. Here we're no longer protected from the sun by a canopy, but we can see the wooded slopes of the gentle Zselic landscape. Our path turns left and leads us over the rickety bridge over the Surján stream, from where we only have to walk 400 metres to Cserénfa.

The village is first mentioned in a tax register of 1536 as Cyerefalva. At that time it was the property of Bálint Török, the lord of the castle of Sigligeti, and after the Turkish invasion it was acquired by the Esterházy family. We enter the village at a rest stop, from where we head towards the bell tower on St. Stephen's Square. The three crosses in front of the belfry commemorate the victims of World War I, while the crosses in front of the belfry commemorate the victims of World War II. The victims of the Second World War are commemorated by a plaque above the entrance to the bell tower. Behind them is a 3.2 m high statue of King St Stephen, carved from oak without stems. There is a bus stop in front of the belfry and a car park behind it.

Back to Simónfa

Following our signposts, we leave the village, initially with the Surján stream flowing on our right to a small side of theThen we cross a wooded area called "Flosstogatás" and come to the edge of ploughland. From here, we return to the woods on our wide dirt road, where we pass through the Nádasdi forest and then through the agricultural fields outside the village, past Zselicszentpál. A long, but not strenuous descent takes us to the vineyards and orchards of Banya Hill in Simonfawhere you also pass some viewpoints over the surrounding hills. Here we continue in a straight line to the S sign and return to Simonfa: Turn left in the village and take the Dózsa György street to the bus stop, the end of the tour.