Vendvidék forest walk

Itinerary

• Start the hike with your back to Hársas Lake on the Z trail, which leads to the suburb of Szentgotthárd.
• The Z trail turns onto Vakarcs Kálmán street and continues up to the junction after the Brenner chapel meadow.
• From the junction, continue straight on the Pᵯ trail, following it to the far end of the dam of Hársas Lake.
• At the end of the dam turn right onto the Z trail, which leads to the parking lot.

Detailed description of the hike

From the lake to the city

The calm, reflective, elongated Hársas Lake is embraced by the forest: since there are no large structures on its shore, trees have grown right to the shoreline, lending the reservoir a pleasant, slightly alpine look due to the pine trees making you squint. From a small terrace near the parking lot, you can look south over the lake before heading north on the Z trail, with your back to the water, entering the forest.

Next to the asphalt road, a covered grill area with tables has been set up. After leaving it, we soon veer off the road. The trail starts up the hillside on a wide forest path, crossing a small clear-cut section. The climb is short, somewhat steep in the middle section, but then flattens out. The trail leads through a forest of mixed old and young specimens of beech, oak, and hornbeam mixed with pines, and crosses the ridge, soon heading downward. The still mixed, dense, and natural diverse forest continues into the creek valley, but we arrive at the edge of the city through a small meadow. Looking right from the street, at the edge of the football field and directly beside the gate, you can see the 18th-century Jewish bell tower, but the urban part of the route does not hold much else.

Szentgotthárd’s jewel is the Baroque garden and the Cistercian monastery – these can be reached with about a 15-minute walk from the point where the Z trail turns right onto Vakarcs Kálmán street, which you leave immediately (turning right again) to exit the city by a street going briefly uphill. At the forest edge, the pointed but restrained building of the Brenner (or Good Shepherd) chapel appears in a landscaped environment. Brenner János, a chaplain from Rábakethely, was murdered in cold blood in 1957 by unknown persons after the settlement was attacked multiple times on the road connecting it with the site of today’s chapel. The chapel in his honor was handed over in 1996, and Brenner János was beatified in 2018.

Back to the lake through pine forests

The trail follows a promenade equipped with benches along the edge of the meadow, then after a short forest stretch it approaches the edge of another clearing, beside which an abandoned greenhouse stands. At the end of the meadow, keep going straight, switching to the Pᵯ trail. The return branch of the hike is much more beautiful than the first: we wander through gently undulating terrain with small gullies, richly interspersed with pine patches in a lush forest. Much of the experience is enhanced by often walking on narrow forest paths instead of forest roads.

The atmosphere of the Őrség and Vendvidék forest landscape is shaped by two elements: the pines and the naturally chaotic mixture (both by tree species and age structure). The spruce, which is planted (i.e., non-native) in the plots, reacts sensitively to climate change, unlike the Scots pine, which prefers heat and drought better, so in recent years many of its stands have been eliminated. The mixed forest provides habitat for many species, and locals have used pines for centuries: resin gatherers collected resin into containers by wounding the bark and carving small veins, which then was used in paints, cosmetics, or even chewing gum. The mixture is also due to the historically long-standing small-scale farming (now ceased) where forest owners always cut just enough wood (usually a few trees) as needed, allowing natural regeneration in small gaps and ensuring a diverse age structure typical of natural forests.

We arrive at Hársas Lake with a short descent through a spruce forest. This time we walk on an entirely undeveloped forest shore path (keeping left) until we reach the dam. The structure was built at the end of the 1980s to dam the Hársas creek, creating the Máriaújfalu reservoir. The most complete view of the lake is from here, at its southern end, and on the far side, we return along a pleasant promenade with built resting places back to the beach and buffet, beyond which we find the parking lot.