The Great Circuit of Zengő

Itinerary

• From Óbánya we follow the K trail to the far edge of Kisújbánya.
• At the fork after Kisújbánya we turn left onto the S trail.
• We follow the S trail to Püspökszentlászló.
• From Püspökszentlászló we follow the K◼ trail (straight) to the Zengő-kő meadow.
• From the Zengő-kő meadow we take a detour to the right on the yellow Hungarian pilgrim trail to Zengő, then descend back down the same way.
• On the K◼ trail, we descend through Bodzás valley to Réka hut.
• From the Réka hut we follow the P+ trail along the entire Réka valley.
• At the Scottish Saint Margaret cross, we turn left onto the K trail, which leads back on the asphalt to Óbánya.

Detailed description of the route

The German-origin "Hungarian Switzerland"

Óbánya, perhaps the most famous settlement in the Mecsek, owes its fame to its picturesque location and its historical Swabian village image. The inhabited area was brought to life by a glassworks founded in the early 18th century, which operated for half a century, consuming the surrounding forest. The glassworks required huge amounts of beech wood to heat the furnace and produce potash (szalajka) to lower the melting point of the glass. Giants with silver trunks who liked the cool were available in seemingly endless numbers in the deep valleys, which provided an excellent habitat for them. The abundant limestone scales of Mecsek also provided plenty of raw material for lime burning to ensure post-cooling strength, but sand and quartz gravel (békasót) had to be brought from elsewhere (closest from the Somogy hills), which was a competitive disadvantage for local glass production. However, the demand for bottles from nearby wine regions, the growth of Pécs, and the widespread use of window glass kept the moving glassworks alive for centuries—the first was established in the Réka valley, followed by those in Óbánya, then Kisújbánya, and finally Pusztabánya.

The long chapter of the Mecsek glassworks ended in the early 19th century when the price of wood rose too high to justify clearing the forests. Traders visiting nearby villages started carrying pottery instead of glass in their wooden-frame backpacks. Today, the unparalleled street view and the green environment together made it famous among local tourists as "Hungarian Switzerland." The white-plastered village has tidy houses and strip plots nestled on steep slopes along the single street. Leaving Óbánya on the K trail, we reach the emerald-colored Trout Lakes, whose produce can be tasted in the village. We bypass the small lakes in a forested catchment area alongside a diverted creek branch and enter the unparalleled beauty of the Óbánya valley. Initially, we still encounter a few buildings; one is the remains of the former Krämer mill, which operated over two dozen wheels with stream water from Kisújbánya to Mecseknádasd until the mid-20th century.

A mid-mountain wilderness

The creek is initially forced into small steps by thinly layered rock ribs perpendicular to its flow, then by larger rock thresholds, creating small waterfalls in places. With its deep incision, the water has exposed many Middle Triassic sedimentary rocks in the valley: in the upper section (near Kisújbánya) harder siliceous limestones dominate, while lower down a "softer" limestone and marl mixture can be observed. The nationally famous valley deserves its popularity, with spectacular forests and a stream bed decorated with rock frills depicting a barely disturbed wilderness. Grandiose, overwhelming forms or huge rock formations are absent, and the sizes are human-scale. The lack of a developed trail and the path crossing many fords through many noisy kilometers paint a landscape of a formerly tamed and subdued mid-mountain landscape in its ancient, original form.

In the narrowest section of the valley, the creek bed fills the space from wall to wall, and the path crosses the stream on sediment-laden fords—during high water the water also floods the path. Soon, a large, dark rock lichen appears on our left on the side of a swirling basin bordered by boulders. The mossy Dripping Rock is a massive freshwater limestone precipitate from which karst water seeps at many points, enlarging the rock further. On the other side a wooden bridge leads to the Slanted Waterfall, whose peculiarity is that the hard but thinly layered limestone and marl beds have been tilted by tectonic pressure, "shredding" and slightly diverting the creek. Thin rock ribs continue to appear further, as the creek has exposed them along the valley length, just segmented and less dense. A small clearing with a shelter and rest area stands here; from here it is only a few minutes along the gentling stream to Kisújbánya, greeting us with its ford path.

Villages embraced by the mountains

The renovated peasant houses and the dirt road mixed with the stream give the impression as if we were walking among the stage sets reflecting centuries-old states of a historical film. The isolated village (part) faithfully preserves the atmosphere of old mountainous settlements, as well as the centuries-old Swabian village image, and is "hidden" in the valley bottom blending into the Mecsek landscape. The third glassworks of the mountain range operated here in the 18th century after Óbánya burned the surrounding forests and they were forced to move further. Workers of Czech origin and German-speaking workers operated it under the leadership of a Bavarian glassmaster—until the barn fire disappeared the neighboring beech woods in just over two decades, so they transferred it to today's Pusztabánya area. After the glassworks closed, the small village inhabitants engaged in grazing (traces of this remain in the spacious pastures of Miske Hill) and wood tool processing (the inn named Klumpás also perpetuated the name of a characteristic industrial product).

From Kisújbánya, a short climb leads out on the asphalt road. Where we turn left on the S trail, we can make a short detour in the opposite direction to the Cigány Hill lookout. Our path leads to the magnificent panoramic Miske Hill, which, due to its elevated and central position, offers wide panoramic views of the eastern, central, and western parts of the Mecsek. The unique landscape revealed by the pasture waves like a green veil beneath the surrounding towering peaks, while the pyramid of Zengő peaks in front. We walk on the old pastures and meadows of Kisújbánya; on the left under the trees hides the village's centuries-old cemetery. The plateau is built of hard basalt scattered as a result of Mecsek volcanism, into which the streams could not carve significant valleys. We slowly reach the green screen and climb a flat mountain ridge in a windbreak forest. Crossing over it, we descend to Diós-kút, whose outlet pipe collar is drawn by precipitated tufa. On the Housemates path, dotted with stations representing the challenges and tasks of married life, we continue our descent and after an asphalt road under the shade of old beeches in a deep corridor, we reach Püspökszentlászló.

Our trek only touches the edge of the village, but it is still worth walking into it. According to legend, its foundation is connected to King Saint László's rescue from a storm and the building of the chapel. The site was later occupied by hermits and Benedictines; in the 18th century, German families moved into the depopulated village during the Turkish occupation—this is when the bishop's summer castle and the church were also built. The arboretum was established at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries (by the bishop's will), though the fate of the settlement was severely damaged by historical storms. The castle operated as a nursing home and tourist hostel, and for a short time Cardinal József Mindszenty was imprisoned there in its dilapidated state. Today, the (renovated) castle and arboretum are open to visitors. After bypassing the latter, we leave Püspökszentlászló on the K◼ trail and after a left turn, we touch the Korsoma meadow patches, where old maps indicate cabbage was grown (as it was known as Kohlplatten).

The pyramid of Southern Transdanubia

We leave the bulldozer road and walk on asphalt for a while until we reach the Zengő-kő meadow equipped with rest areas and a natural stone rain shelter. Next to the memorial stone of the old summer camps, we switch to the yellow Hungarian pilgrim trail (to the right), and on the next section, we pay the price requested by the highest peak of Mecsek: we climb on a brutally steep path through a beech forest in a primeval atmosphere, torn by the wind, to the 682 meter summit. Next to the lookout a ruin of a 13th-century residential tower greets us, but the history of the summit's structures dates back to the Migration Period. In the 1970s, a geodetic survey tower was erected, and in 2020, a lookout was added in the middle, whose upper level offers perhaps the most beautiful panorama of Mecsek and Southern Hungary. Only here can you truly measure how the Eastern Mecsek undulates as a distinguished hilly landscape above the surrounding lower slopes, its green mantle covering a sea of flat roofs and dense valley networks. In the center, under Dobogó, the meadows of Miske Hill stretch out; Kisújbánya can also be spotted. To the west appear the hills sloping to Pécs, the Misina-Tubes ridge, and the flat back of Jakab Hill; to the south the Villány Hills and mist-covered (Croatian) Papuk dominate the horizon. On clear days, vast views open up: the Kőszeg Mountains can be outlined, as well as the Buda Hills and the Bakony; most easily recognizable is perhaps the mass of Badacsony. The panorama offers the meeting of undulating hills and the Great Plain and shows Mecsek as a "model."

We leave the "top" of Southern Transdanubia the same way as we approached it, but the trail leading down to the Zengő-kő meadow is no more restful than it was uphill. We cross the asphalt beside a rain shelter carefully built for this purpose, then on the K◼ trail, descending under beeches mixed with oaks into the Bodzás valley. Shade falls on the narrow, deep hollow from Zengő’s shadow; the cool air is accompanied by the moist air breathed from the spring meadow, so lower down we walk again in the dark beeches. A detour leads to the sometimes non-functioning Gizella spring. Our narrow, wild transverse path turns down to the valley floor, and passing fallen trunks and crossing the creek leads to the Réka hut in a spruce-shaded, atmospheric, deep hollow. The glade, equipped with fire pits and benches, is dominated by the mountain hut renovated in 2024. Bowing before the stable-yielding Etelka spring encased in Mórágy granite, we can drink from the mountain’s pure water and rest on the house’s terrace on the left. Like many others, this building was called into life by hunting but has operated as a mountain hut for decades. The house has two rooms, a kitchen, and a common area; electricity is available as long as the solar energy stored in the battery lasts. On the meadow opposite the building, a bivouac hut was also established, whose lower level can be used as a rain shelter.

In the land of glassworks, in the valley of crabs

We leave the house on one of the valleys running southwest-northeast that define the relief of the Eastern Mecsek, the strikingly long Réka valley. The P+ trail leads us into the deep valley, initially through dark mixed forest, then by clearings and swampy sections, following the stony creek bed. At a left turn, we reach the point where glass production began in the Mecsek: in 1699 the abbot of Pécsvárad founded a glassworks here, hiring masters and workers from Bavaria and Burgenland. Next to the roughly 10-person staff industrial facility mainly producing blown glass and window panes, saw and quartz-crushing mills also operated on the creek, but since quartz gravel had to be brought from far away and there were not enough workers, the small factory soon closed in 1701. Years later, the story of the Mecsek glassworks continued in today's Óbánya. The glassmaster reportedly discovered silver occurrences on the nearby hillside, which were later mined (hence the "Money mine" name appearing on some maps), or at least attempts were made to extract ore, as the tunnel remains exist and Cretaceous volcanic rocks inducing mineralization can also be found in the valley.

We cross the creek several times and reach a paved forestry road further on. We hike along it for a long stretch; on the left, deep in the tree shade, flows the Old or Fisherman’s creek. It was once inhabited by many crayfish, hence the name Crab valley, which later changed to Réka. At the end of a gentle ascent, we leave the forestry road to the left and again descend to the creek. At the narrowest section of the Réka valley, dense, lush, natural forest surrounds us; the path clings to the creek, which reshapes its bed with floods. We cross the creek several times on fords, eased by scattered boulders. Holiday homes also stand at the mouth of the valley, and our path leads out onto a hillside where Rékavár once stood, crossing scattered stones rolled down long ago, reaching the Óbánya access road. The fortress known since the 13th century is famous for the tradition that contrary to reality, Saint Margaret of Scotland, the granddaughter of King Stephen and later wife of King Malcolm III, was born within its walls. A cross erected in her memory stands opposite, on the other side of the road, a tasteful covered resting place by the creek.

From here, we follow the asphalt on the Rockenbauer Pál Southern Transdanubian Blue Trail marked K, alongside which several former mill buildings also line up—of course, now without wheels. The narrowing valley is atmospheric and beautiful enough to counterbalance the monotony of walking on concrete until we arrive in Óbánya. At the village's entrance, a restaurant operates; in the center, a pub offering food is open, where we can eat and drink to end the substantial and demanding hike.