Kohászok route (Kohász blue trail), section 3: Járdánháza – Ózd – Sáta

Itinerary

• From Járdánháza we follow the K mark all the way to Sáta.
• In Sáta, from the church to the pub (where we find the stamp), we follow the K+ mark.

Járdánháza – Ózd: Transylvanian atmospheres and mining sights

Járdánháza is not exactly a hospitable place, and the Kohászok route quickly cuts through it: straight across the meadows, approaching the next landscape unit, the hills around Arló with their striking appearance even from afar. Between steep, grass-covered sides and occasionally slipped small hills, we find a road by car to the Arló Lake. The lake, surrounded by vacation homes and hardly accessible from them, is partly artificial and partly natural in origin: the slope of Csahó hill slipped three times due to blasting in mining, and the last landslide in 1929 permanently blocked the stream’s path, creating the stagnant water.

The mark first leads to the forest edge, and be alert when it turns back to the lake shore: at the meeting of two paths stands a signboard, on the back of which we find the stamp. The route does not lead down to the shore but twists among hills with peculiar visual worlds from the far end of the water surface. Beside the Csahó Valley, low but steep hills covered with semi-dry grass, shrubs, and pines ripple, and their slipped, dented shapes recall certain points of Transylvania.

Reaching the first ridge, a large trace of slip “illuminates” on one hilltop edge on the left, but the whole crooked, open landscape is hardly forgiving. Turning right from the valley, we climb out from a green, amphitheater-like basin along a narrowing, sandy deep path, on the other side already along a gas pipeline corridor, then descend into Somsály in the forest. The typical mining settlement, formed during the early 19th century boom of coal mining in Ózd, sank into “coma” at the end of the 20th century along with the region’s industry. Along the tourist route, we can see the ruined, massive but crumbling miners’ church reminiscent of a blast furnace.

We climb up the street to the edge of the village, and before the pine forest, from a ladder we can still look back to the Vajdavár region: there rises the Ökör Hill and its group, in the background the Mátra also appears. Sometimes hard to follow, overgrown in places, elsewhere a pine grove path leads to Ózd, attention to the markings is necessary. From Bükk Hill’s clearing, the town is already visible, behind it the mountains of the Carpathians, up to the Low Tatras. We walk into the town among houses with gardens, and at the entrance of the Digital Power Plant we can stamp. The former ironworks is the mid-19th century creation of the Gömör iron industry with a long history, originally planned to be built near Mátra but finally settled on a remote small village, Ózd. The one and a half century production collapsed along with the local industry after the regime change. Today, the Digital Power Plant and the National Film History Experience Park operate on part of the factory monster.

Ózd – Sáta: easy hillside walk

The next section is a sort of resting walk between mountains. Heading out from Ózd, we first bypass the Hétstelep segregated area, and from the houses on the hill, we can still look back at the town. At the end of the street, the markings invite us to the right, and beside a fence, we start climbing the most troublesome section of the Kohászok route: the vegetation often completely entangles this stretch, which the route maintainers try to keep clean with laborious work. A long forest hike follows over low hills, in mixed forests, with only one viewpoint to the surrounding rolling landscape. If we look out to the edges of pastures near the tourist path, we can note that the size of the undulating plateau overlooking Bükk is growing, as we are already heading south.

We cross the closed Putnok railway line and walk under open hill ridges to Sáta on asphalt road. In the center, in front of the church, the K mark changes to K+ – because the Kohász blue joins the National Blue Trail in the next village, it was necessary to somehow distinguish it. On the opposite side of the village, we find the Sáta stamp in the pub next to the street.