Pápalátó walk in the primeval pine forest

Itinerary

• We leave Fenyőfő on the Z trail towards Vinye, following the asphalt road.
• The Z trail turns right off the highway and leads under Pápalátó-kő.
• At a junction, we turn left onto the Z▲ trail, where we climb up to Pápalátó.
• Continuing from the rock, we soon reach a fork; here we turn right onto the Z trail, which takes us back to the asphalt.
• We leave the highway to the right on the Z+ trail, which we follow through the ancient pine forest.
• At a forest road crossroads, we turn left onto the P◼ trail, which leads back to Fenyőfő.

Detailed description of the hike

Pine-inhabited plateau

The pine plateau, depopulated during the Turkish era, was repopulated in the first half of the 18th century when the Esterházys settled German serfs at the foot of the slopes. Its ornament, a baroque church easily spotted from afar and which we will immediately notice from Pápalátó-kő, stands on its neat and charming main street. The Z trail follows the Vinye asphalt road for nearly 1 kilometer, then leaves it to the right and enters the pine forest. Ascending gently, we walk in a stunted deciduous forest, seeing a few pines only here and there. At a junction, we turn left, reaching a bend in a more open area, bypassing a young stand on one side.

The hiking trail is fenced, with lattices protecting the growing young stand from wildlife. The wire mesh is absent, and on the left, on the Z▲ marked path, we begin a steep climb: a trail with limestone rubble and sometimes rocky outcrops leads us through a winding oak forest. As steep as it is in places, the slope ends quickly, and we reach the flat ridge of Pápalátó-kő. The small rocky terrace is essentially a carved fracture of the rock forming the ridge of Mennydörgő Hill: the neighboring valley was deepened by a former watercourse, and the hard limestone gradually became exposed from its less resistant environment due to constant abrasive and polishing processes. (The northern edge of Bakony in this area is cut by countless short ditches, almost all dry; these are traces of long-gone water flows. Many were deepened by karst water streams that once surfaced on the plateau (now dried up). The longer ones were created by intermittent water flows during earlier, drier climate periods, when water rushed down them after rare but heavy rains.)

Pápalátás

A fire pit was formed from several stones collected nearby on the small limestone plateau’s ridge. The knobbly rim framed by old trees offers a distant panorama: a large part of the Kisalföld plain lies before us. The name Pápalátó obviously does not refer to an ecclesiastical leader but to the nearby small town of Pápa, spreading northwest. The abbey building sitting on the hill of Pannonhalma also appears, and in very clear weather, the Kőszeg and Sopron Mountains can be seen on the other side of the plain's edge.

Below spreads the dark green shade of the vast pine forest; this is our target for the second half of the hike. We continue on the path and a few minutes later, at a fork, turn right on the Z trail! Mossy rocks and deadwood carpet adorn the narrow hollow of Bodzás-ditch - unfortunately, a logged patch at its lower end breaks the otherwise dark forest. (Above, hidden by trees, a cavity deepens on the side of Pápalátó-kő.) The short loop closes, and we walk back on the section already covered to the asphalt road leading to Fenyőfő.

The great survivor

We leave the access road to the right to enter the protected area of the Fenyőfő primeval pine forest. We are in a forest with a unique atmosphere: the sandy soil ensures soft steps, and the dense, sheltered “Scots pine jungle” emits a subtle scent. In the first meters on the right stands the Renner Cross, and a few hundred meters ahead, on the opposite side, is the “terrifying big tree” marked on maps. Specimens older than 200 years were part of the original community: after the ice age that ended 12,000 years ago, the pine forest conquered the area and later, due to the sandy soil, did not retreat behind the deciduous trees. According to available sources, presumably, reckless logging led to the near disappearance of the primeval forest in medieval times, with only a few patches and trees surviving — some of these were also damaged by strong storms. After the Turkish expulsion, the settlers renewed the forest partly with seeds collected locally to bind the drifting sand and partly with seedlings brought from Austria, so the forest in this form is only partially the remnant of the original stand. One of the few surviving older specimens is the so-called “terrifying big tree.”

Since forestry practices spare the stand, trees of various ages can grow side by side: where an older specimen or forest section falls onto the sand, a keen competition starts on the soil receiving light, and only the tallest individuals can survive there long-term in a small area. The dense, hardly penetrable forest is a shared habitat for lowland and mountain species. In the northeastern part of the pine forest, from the 1980s to the early 2000s, Europe's deepest bauxite lens mining took place, but now young pine plantations cover the mining area as part of restoration efforts.

Easy forest walk

The Z+ hiking trail, with sharp turns and pleasantly sandy and needle-covered ground, leads into Szépfa-clearing. (The lines serve to effectively stop or quickly prevent the spread of a possible forest fire.) We cover the last section of the hike on the P◼ trail, after turning left at a fork onto a wide road – advancing, the pine increasingly mixes with deciduous trees. A grassy meadow closes the easy forest walk before the village, and finally, the World War and Trianon memorials indicate we are back in Fenyőfő. We reach the bus stop by turning right around the church, where with a bit of luck, the café is open as well.