Walk in the gentle gorge of Gömör, the Muráň Gorge

Itinerary

• We climb up from the center of Beretke (Bretka) on the trail marked Z\ to the church, then visit the Pes-kő (Peško) cave, and finally cross the Muráň river.
• On the other side of the river we follow the Z trail (to the right) to the middle of the Muráň Gorge, to the building of Rosszgyár (Stará huta).
• From Rosszgyár we stay in the valley, but now hike on the S trail all the way to the end of the gorge, where the hillside drops away on the right.
• We return to Rosszgyár on the S trail.
• This time from Rosszgyár we follow the Z\ trail to the right, which leads back over the hilltop to the Muráň bridge.
• Crossing the bridge, we turn right and return to the center of Beretke on an unmarked path through the cemetery.

Detailed description of the hike

Rock formations hidden in the hills

Beretke (Bretka) lies squeezed between the hills of Sajó and Gömör on a low mountain ridge that "climbs" up, so the small church ruin and the whitewashed Reformed church above the village center dominate the settlement picture from limestone rocks. Before the wars (according to postcards) it was a lively small village thanks to its attractive karst spring-fed bathing beach, and even in its somewhat worn form today, it has retained some of its former charm.

The Muráň Gorge (Prielom Muráňa) educational trail (marked Z\) climbs from the branching street over stairs equipped with handrails and rocks towards the churches. The robust, angular wall remains fit perfectly in shape with the panel blocks visible below, although their history goes much further back. The St. Andrew Apostle Chapel built in the 1860s suffered a fatal hit in World War II similarly to the neighboring church, but only the latter was rebuilt. From here, you can see the valley of Sajó edged with low, wooded hills, at the far end of which the silhouette of Bél-kő in Bükk and the Vajdavár region appear.

On the far side of the building, the only remaining representative of the village's seven reinforced concrete bunkers is crumbling. You can look around inside the cramped interior of the machine gun nest struck by a rocket from Russian troops. From here, the trail climbs into the thorny hilltop, then reaches a pasture from which Sztolica and the Muráň Karst are visible in the distance, and from their cover, the Király Hill of the Low Tatras appears. The bike track soon disappears, and rocky terrain indicates that we have reached the back of Pes-kő (Peško). The path slopes downward, and on cleverly constructed stairs with handrails, between mossy, broken limestone blocks, we can step onto a tiny rocky ledge. The view is limited, but for the first time, the howling Muráň (Muráň) can be seen below.

A little more stair-climbing and in an exciting environment, the Pes-kő cave's dark corridor greets us in the side of a large, smoothly surfaced rock. (Before it, there is a rotating, trilingual, and informative board, as well as benches.) The 16 m-long tunnel's name (like its Hungarian counterpart) means cave rock and was once carved by a cave creek, later "plugged" by the incising Muráň. People discovered it in the 4th millennium BC, just as the 2-meter-high giant deer, which roamed the tundra steppes, left its lower jawbones in the sediment. On the far side of the passage, a shaded resting place was created in a small rock pavilion. From Pes-kő, the path descends to the riverside, then leads through dense vegetation to a bridge. After crossing, we turn towards Muráň Gorge and this time admire the "guarding" Pes-kő rock on the shore from below. The Medzi vodami (Vízkoz) is a flat area caught between the mill race built in 1920 and the Muráň. They even built a dam on the river that made boat transportation possible, and later (until 1955), a hydroelectric power plant also produced electricity on site.

The Muráň Gorge

The Z\ marked nature trail finds its way in a narrow strip between smaller limestone rocks and the shoreline under low banks, following the river that bends in an arc. Trees join over the wide bed in a shaded "corridor," and moss-covered limestone cliffs protrude alternatively from one side or the other from the lush vegetation carpet. The forest idyll is briefly interrupted when before the second river bend, we climb up to the hilltop, bypassing the section where chains once helped hikers across the walls beside the Muráň. From the path crossing the pasture, we see the cliff on the far side (Sólyom Rock), then descend again back to the river on a stone-step path with stone benches. With a short detour of a few meters, the Rosszgyári Cave (Hutnianska jaskyňa) can be visited, where German troops set up an officers' post in the narrowing chamber during World War II.

As the valley narrows, the river shows a wilder face again and turns with foam towards a short, gorge-like section. We then bend back in the side valley covered by mossy rock fields feeding in from the left at the valley crossroads at the end of the hike. So if someone feels they have seen enough, there is an option to shorten the route here. At the valley junction, there is a small resting place and a board, and on the other side once operated Slovakia's oldest ironworks with a high chimney (Rosszgyár or Szöggyár / Stará huta, its name denotes abandonment). The 17th-century furnace only operated for a few years on the edge of the Gömör metallurgy region, and we can also cross its remains at low water levels. From here, the S trail guides further along the slightly widening river valley, which becomes distinctly rockier than before. The floodplain is wider along the shore, and beaver-gnawed trees also appear. The area's relative intactness has been guaranteed by protected status since 1980, but the sight of trash accumulating in beaver dams and natural jammed debris brought by water is dispiriting. However, the mixed forest image of the rocky, hard-to-access terrain is all the more beautiful, and it supposedly hides no less than 20 oak trees older than six hundred years.

The soothing riverside walk awakens you to Muráň Gorge’s most beautiful rock-fenced stretch with its lush vegetation carpet and mossy stone sea. Here, the limestone walls "grow" larger along the trail, then after a smaller rocky gate, the landscape flattens, and the exciting section of the valley ends. Although you can visit Meliata with a 10-15 minute walk, our route description suggests the return.

View from the pasture

We walk back on the S trail to the Rosszgyár junction, then this time turn right into the side valley with mossy rocks sprinkled with stones, again following the Z\ mark. In this structural trench springs Seggvágány Well, which depicts the shape of the terrain in its name, followed shortly by a steep, short climb. Arriving on the hilltop, we walk on a pasture along the edge of the gorge forest towards Beretke, and although the marking is not always clear, the direction cannot be missed, and sooner or later the Sólyom-kő rock formation appears again on our left - here we do not turn left but aim for the forest edge continuing beyond the meadow’s protrusion. Soon the village houses and the wall of Pes-kő (and in the distance, the Bükki Plateau) appear, and finally descending on a trampled, rocky slope, we reach the Muráň shore and the tourist bridge. After crossing, turn right so the path navigates through the cemetery to the main square.