Time travel on Hungary's longest Roman road to Kőpite

Itinerary: 

In this area, less known by nature hikers but much more known by nature conservation professionals, the Dunaalmási Kőpite Circular Hiking Trails educational trail network created by the Duna-Ipoly National Park Directorate leads around, totaling 9.3 km in length. The main artery of the trails, the red marked path, starts from the Dunaalmási quarry memorial stone, from which with smaller or larger detours you can reach the four interconnected educational trails and their 32 stations. On the monument's Roman Road itself, starting from the main road, the Z+, later the Z and P+ signs lead towards Dunaalmás and Dunaszentmiklós, but these do not touch the hilltops offering unique panoramas. At the memorial stone, you can also find an information board presenting the somewhat complex educational trail network, it is worth photographing the trail map or downloading the description of the educational trail to your phone using the QR code posted on the information board. The educational trail is astonishingly well signposted, making it hard to get lost. The presented hike (9.1 km) strings together the most beautiful parts of the educational trail network and follows the trail marks as described below.

• We start on the red educational trail from the Dunaalmási quarry memorial stone located beside the main road between Tata and Dunaalmás towards the Betlehem forestry lodge.
• At the forestry lodge, we switch to the green educational trail and by staying left on it, we directly climb up to the nearby Les-hegy summit (taking the right on the trail, through a small loop, we can walk the entire green educational trail to the summit).
• Returning to the red educational trail, we continue along the now very spectacular Roman Road all the way to the column commemorating Jenő Kóbor, a nature hiker, and also to the informational board of the Kőpite Circular Hiking Trails.
• We turn right onto the blue educational trail (together with the P+ sign), which after a few steps turns left towards the Roman era quarries.
• After passing through the quarries, we climb onto the plateau and take a right on the field cart road, then at the nearby crossing turn left (still with the blue educational trail).
• We climb up to the summit of Kőpite-hegy, then descend on the blue educational trail on its far side back to the Roman Road and the red educational trail.
• At the crossing, the presented hike turns left, returning on the already known and spectacular Roman Road with a touch at the forestry lodge back to the starting point of the educational trail network. At the crossing, going straight, however, we can return to the starting point on the purple educational trail starting here, a somewhat shorter route but following the open path of the gas pipeline.

Detailed description of the hike:

The first part of the time travel on the Roman Road

The spectacular memorial stone at the start of the hike immediately helps us realize that the initially nondescript acacia woods through which the completely ordinary forest path leads is no ordinary path (later, further up in the forest, this also visually becomes clear). The Romans extracted the easily shaped freshwater limestone from the quarries around Kőpite-hegy and Les-hegy, primarily for the buildings of Brigetio (today Szőny), the nearest fortress city of the ancient Roman Empire, including military camps and civilian settlements. The Romans built an extensive road network along the Danube limes between watchtowers and settlements, and the traces of the consciously designed, mostly paved, and often covered roads are not only visible in aerial photographs as gravel bands running through the plowed fields. In several places, the road itself can be seen directly: for example, on the slope of Hideglelős-kereszt near Esztergom, but also the Roman boundary stone serving as the foundation for the St. Orbán statue in the border of Piliscsév testifies to the former Aquincum–Brigetio route running there. It's no wonder that a good-quality road was built to transport the stone, and an about two-kilometer spectacular section of it can be seen and walked here in the forest. This explains why the road itself is under monument protection.

The dirt road with a gentle slope leads almost straight to the Betlehem forestry lodge (1.1 km). Here on the right, we find the green educational trail detour to Les-hegy. The green educational trail ascends to Les-hegy with a small detour, but during our hike, we head directly to the summit which offers excellent views. In the quarries around the summit, the molar of the southern mammoth—the largest land mammal that ever lived and twice as heavy as today's African elephant, extinct about 10,000 years ago after the last ice age—was discovered at the beginning of the 1900s; this molar is also the emblem of the educational trail.

From the 236-meter-high summit of Les-hegy, you can clearly see the impressive eagle’s cliffs of Gerecse, the plains of Kisalföld starting here with the surroundings of Tata, and the line of the Danube. On the summit, a panorama board helps identify the sights, and the summit itself is an ideal place for a brief trip through geological history to understand why the Romans mined here, why Samu lived in present-day Vérteszőlős, and what a mammoth was doing here at all. Nearby Tata is famously called the "city of waters" since during human history the region's largest-yield karst springs erupted here. In 1885, about 287,000 cubic meters of spring water broke the surface daily in Tata! Most of these dried up during the socialist decades due to increased water pumping related to the deep-mining coal mines of the area, just as the well-known karst springs of Hévíz, Tapolca, and Buda also decreased during this time, but the greatest ecological disaster victim was likely Tata. With the cessation of mining, the springs began to operate again in the early 2000s, but it will take decades to reach their original yield. The ancient Romans not only considered Tata’s springs inexhaustible but at the end of the 19th century, surveys were made on how to supply Budapest drinking water from Tata – the volume was not a problem, but the 20-22 °C water rising would not cool down sufficiently in the pipeline system planned to be built to Budapest. (It is worth noting in parentheses that the former flow rate would be enough for Budapest's current population!)

The water absorbed in the limestone ridges of today's Gerecse and Vértes migrates intricately towards these spectacular springs. Over millions of years, the springs shifted in several stages from one site to another, parallel to the tectonic movements of the area. This is evidenced by the travertine layers formed around the springs, for example here around Les-hegy: the multi-level quarry beneath us, exposing about 30-40 meters thick (!) limestone mass, well demonstrates the volume of former spring volcanic activity.

It is easy to imagine that the warm waters of the former karst springs provided home to rich wildlife, as can still be observed on the unique Tatai Fényes Educational Trail today. The Hungarian National Museum Vérteszőlősi Exhibition Site is similar, located in a travertine quarry on the edge of Gerecse. Here in 1965, the famous neck bone of the prehistoric man was found, and the unique collection in Europe (settlement parts, fireplace, jewelry, as well as an exhibition preserving and presenting the footprints of prehistoric animals visiting the former springs) gives a detailed picture of the period preceding the life of Neanderthals. Much later, the karst springs played a huge role in how the Romans shaped the landscape and how the oldest fish pond in Hungary and the country’s first culture terrace came to be in Tata.

Returning to the red educational trail, we continue towards Kőpite-hegy, said to have gotten its name from its distinctive pancake-like shape reminiscent of a pancake, although the shape of the rock on its summit is also suspicious. Leaving the forestry lodge, the uniqueness of the Roman Road and the place becomes increasingly apparent: in the heavily disturbed forest, we walk on a several-meter-high "dam" laid with stones. It's hard to imagine such a strongly reinforced road was needed for transporting stone. It is hard to imagine further how armies of slaves transported the stones for the buildings of the military city with heavy carts. The Roman advanced road-building technique is best proven by the excellently preserved arched water drains, marked with separate signs, of which there are a total of five along the trail routes. In the quite dry forest, it is hard to imagine why such massive water drains were built. We follow the red educational trail all the way to the column commemorating Jenő Kóbor, then turn right onto the blue educational trail (and the P+ sign) towards the Roman quarries.

Time travel in the Roman quarries and the strangely named summit of Kőpite

A few steps ahead, a sign indicates we should turn left towards the quarry yards along the blue educational trail, which winds through winding paths between quarry walls. Gerecse has always been an outstanding site for domestic quarrying, and it still is, just think of the red marble quarry above Tardos. The quarry walls in front of us are made of soft, easily carved freshwater limestone, which was already extracted by the Celtic tribes living here, but quarrying truly began with the Romans who needed enormous amounts of building material to reinforce the limes stretching along the Danube. It is also worth noting that in the four interconnected quarries, the about 20-meter-thick freshwater limestone layer is an open book for geologists.

At the end of the quarry yards, the path steeply climbs to a spacious field where we turn right on the cart road, still with the blue educational trail. Here on the plateau of Nagy-hegy in Dunaalmás, we can get acquainted closely with the daily challenges of nature conservation habitat management. A few decades ago, this plateau was still a pasture, where grazing ensured habitat for strictly protected plants and also for the strictly protected European hamster colony. With the decline of animal husbandry, shrub encroachment immediately began, and in recent years, the former pasture has almost completely disappeared. The Duna-Ipoly National Park Directorate, as the nature conservation manager of the area, "freed the pasture from captivity" with human work in 2018.

The blue educational trail leads straight up to the summit of Kőpite-hegy. From the 292-meter-high peak, the most beautiful panorama of the trail unfolds before us, and there is also a rain shelter here, making it an excellent location for a short rest. From the summit, our eyes are primarily drawn to the Ferencmajori fishpond system and the Danube strip, but the water mirror of Öreg-tó can also be seen. The wetland at the foot of the hills below us (led by the Ferencmajori fishponds) is considered one of Hungary's richest areas in bird species, with about 300 species observed here so far.

From here, it is also understandable that the warm spring waters play a role in events such as Hungary's largest nature conservation event, the Tata wild goose gathering. The warmer water is ideal for birds not only because it does not freeze easily but also because it is particularly rich in fish. Birds eagerly follow river valleys and areas around larger lakes during their migrations. Thus, the Által-ér valley beneath us could also have become such a route over the past millennia, partly due to human intervention. The internationally significant Tata Öreg-tó and its surroundings, as well as the international importance so-called Ramsar wetlands found around Tata, belong to the Natura 2000 network of important European habitats, and they are visited by large numbers of birds, which is why Tata is the only Hungarian member of the exclusive Ramsar city network consisting of just 18 members.

We leave the summit on a staircase on the blue educational trail, then turning right as we reach the clearing, descending on the blue route back to the already known Roman Road, which leads left with a touch to the forestry lodge and back to the starting point of our hike. From this junction, we can also continue straight, following the purple educational trail starting here, which is a few hundred meters shorter but runs all along a gas pipeline lane.