Kisvárda – Sátoraljaújhely (AK-13)

Itinerary:

During the route, we must follow the K marking throughout.

• From Kisvárda, we cross along the Belfő Canal to the northern end of Rétközberencs.
• From Rétközberencs, we reach the sluice of the Belfő Canal on an asphalt road, then we wind through sandy cart paths to Tiszakanyár.
• At Tiszakanyár, we cut lengthwise along the Main Road, then crossing the Tisza bridge entering the Bodrogköz, arriving at Cigánd on the flood protection embankment.
• In Cigánd, we navigate through the Main Street and Petőfi Sándor Street, finally leaving the town on Vasút Street to reach the Tiszakaradi Main Canal on a straight agricultural road, along which we arrive at the sealing place of the Cigánd lock house.
• On the other side of the Tiszakaradi Main Canal, we walk on the embankment, then on a straight dirt road, and near the village on asphalt to enter Páčin.
• Passing the Mágócsy Castle, through Bíró Garden and the cemetery, we leave Páčin, then turning onto the embankment, crossing fields and circumventing the marsh of the Karcsa Channel to reach Karcsa.
• In Karcsa, cutting through land roads connected at right angles south and west, we reach the Karos Conquest Era Visitor Center.
• We leave Karos on an asphalt road to the border crossing, from where we walk partly along the bank of the Felsőberecki Main Canal and partly along the border to Felsőberecki.
• From Felsőberecki to Alsóberecki, walking on top of the Bodrog embankment, crossing the Bodrog Bridge, partly alongside the Bodrog then the Ronyva on the flood protection embankment, we reach Sátoraljaújhely, where touching the downtown area we arrive at the endpoint by the train station.

Detailed description:

Kisvárda–Tiszakanyár

The 13th section of the Alföld Blue Trail starts at the edge of Kisvárda from the castle currently under renovation. The castle was built by the Várdai family in the 15th century with permission from King Sigismund. During the prolonged construction, first the southern palace was erected, then a palisade trench was built around the residential buildings. After the Várdai family died out, István Nyáry, a co-owner, transformed the castle into a Baroque-style residence in the mid-17th century, when the chapel was also built. Although there were ongoing local conflicts during the occupation, the castle did not play a significant role in historical events. Kisvárda’s fortification changed hands multiple times during the battles of János Szapolyai and Ferdinand of Habsburg's troops, and during the Rákóczi War of Independence, the local royalist nobility took refuge here, switching allegiance to the prince under pressure from the Kuruc troops. The building started to decay after the war of independence, as the local nobility used the abandoned castle as a quarry for their estates and city houses. In 1828, the common landowners protected the remaining ruins by decree as a “precious antiquity,” preventing further looting. This document is considered one of the first in Hungary’s monument protection history. The wall remains were conserved; in the mid-20th century, a museum and later a castle theater were established within the ruins. Comprehensive renovation began in the 2020s.

Next to the castle is a bathing beach, where at the corner of the building we find the first stamp of this section. After passing the characteristic beach booth row, we pass suburban shopping centers and finally leave the settlement for good along the Belvíz Canal bank. The artificially straightened watercourse crosses swampy areas, surrounded by old willow and poplar groves and wet meadows, parts of which have been cultivated. This area is a favorite habitat for waterfowl; due to its remoteness, we can surely see herons, egrets, and other protected birds here.

The next settlement, Rétközberencs, is only barely touched. We pass by a couple of rundown houses at the northern edge of the village; on the last plot, at the municipal waterworks fence, we collect the next stamp. After one last effort, we cross the outer dunes of the Nyírség sandy ridge, bypass a canal sluice, then struggle with blowing sand on the customary sandy route lined with acacia trees.

On the road crossing fields and acacia groves, we arrive at the last settlement on the Tisza side, Tiszakanyár. Here, at a local hill, resting and recharging at a cozy hospitality unit called the Anita Buffet, we get our next stamp.

Tiszakanyár–Páčin

Descending from the modest height, we leave the increasingly neglected farms along the long Main Street. Turning onto the Tisza embankment, we wave goodbye to the Tiszántúl, the sandy ridge of Szabolcs, and step onto the land of the former Zemplén county, arriving at the particularly flat Bodrogköz region. From the embankment of the right bank of the river, the Tokaj Mountains, crowned by the sharp mountain group of the Sátoros Hills, are first distinctly visible on the western horizon. We follow the embankment for a longer stretch but only sense the Tisza, not seeing it, as the lush floodplain poplar forest hides the sluggish, winding river's silvery ribbon from view.

We enter Cigánd from the old ferry crossing. Wandering along the Main Street for a little over a kilometer, we reach the small town center, where it's worth taking a short detour to the exhibition collecting the cultural memories of the region. The museum gate combines traditional adobe houses, a produce store barn, and a granary; walking through the exhibition, we get acquainted with the memories and preserved equipment of peasant life managing land between the Tisza and Bodrog, and can also watch a film showcasing the area's values. A peculiarity of the place is that in one building, rooms furnished with artifacts from the communist era allow a time travel to the mid-20th century.

Leaving the regional center behind, we cross the road leading to Tiszakarad at the last houses and start a long, straight section towards Páčin, detouring only to cross the Tiszakaradi Canal. At the end of the four-kilometer painfully straight stretch between fields, the refreshing road following the canal bank with bends is welcome, leading with a significant detour to the old stone bridge of the Cigánd lock house. We must make about two kilometers extra for crossing and stamping along the canal.

On the other side, after a short correction, an even longer march starts straight towards Páčin, mostly along a sparsely shading tree line. The dirt road turns asphalt near Páčin, then after briefly walking among houses, we cross the road and arrive on the other side at the castle park. The stamp is fixed to the information board here, and then we pass the walled Mágócsy Castle, which is worth visiting if time permits. The beautifully renovated castle, originally built in late Renaissance style, houses an exhibition furnished with period-appropriate furniture, allowing insight into the aristocratic daily life at the time of construction, and a cozy accommodation can also be found nearby.

The castle was built in 1581 by András Mágócsy after his marriage to Judit Alaghy, although he only briefly enjoyed his work as he was poisoned a few years after its completion. The building served several owners and was damaged during Kuruc battles. The deteriorating structure was actively eroded by the local population, then in the 19th century, István Sennyei rebuilt it in romantic style, adding towers and a stone wall around the castle as decoration, without protective function. We can still see this striking yet somewhat austere interior building, which after shedding its school function imposed during communist decades, now hosts the Bodrogközi Museum exhibition. The aristocratic wealth is best demonstrated by the cozy interior dimensions, where from the lower floor presenting the castle's story, we reach the authentic mahogany staircase leading to the period-furnished upper living quarters.

Páčin–Felsőberecki

We leave the village through the park behind the castle, along the Páčin cemetery. Crossing among graves at the edge of the field, following the signal through the field due to lack of a path. Along the winding Felsőberecki Channel bordering the fields, we detour to the canal bank along the border where we can at least walk on a path. The special winding and surrounding oxbows are remnants of the once navigable Karcsa river, which as a naturally detached branch of the Tisza provided water connections all the way to the Bodrog. It was favored for transporting salt arriving from Transcarpathia, as its water was calmer than the Tisza's.

On this section, we get closest to the visually protruding volcanic massif Tarbucka located across the border, which is the northern frame of the Upper Bodrogköz and the outermost part of the Zemplén Hills in Slovakia. Tarbucka is a volcanic cone related to the Tokaj Mountains, although most of the Zemplén Hills consist of much older sedimentary and transformed rocks. Despite its grassy peak barely rising 200 meters above the surrounding terrain, its shape is a defining feature on the even-height, smooth plain.

After touching the border line and bypassing the Karcsa dead branch, we turn south on a bombarded road paved with volcanic stones from nearby. We head almost straight to Karcsa, whose main attraction is the Árpád-era church built from the Tarbucka quarry stone, where we find the stamp in its garden. The robust but finely worked Romanesque building consists of two parts: the older round church with six apses built in the 11th–12th centuries forms the eastern altar section, to which the larger western unit was added in the 12th–13th centuries. The rectangular building with a longitudinal nave enlarged multiple times could accommodate the growing congregation. Decoratively carved columns stand at the entrance, and the nearly millennium-old church has a truly captivating atmosphere. According to local legend, fairies built it in a single night, and its bell lies at the bottom of Lake Karcsa, ringing only once every 100 years. It’s worth inspecting the church interior if we manage to reach the caretaker via the entrance phone number.

Crossing Karcsa again, we wander through fields on straight dirt roads, then arriving at the excavated Conquest-era cemetery at the village border, we enter Karos. Next to the burial mounds holding rich artifact memories, there is a covered exhibition showcasing the life and customs of our ancestors arriving in the Carpathian Basin. At the gate of the Karos Conquest-era cemetery, we also find the stamp, so we just have to enter the gate to the covered and open-air exhibition area.

On a sand hill rising from the floodplain environment, at the end of the 1980s, 73 Conquest-era graves were excavated. It is assumed to be a tribal cemetery of settlers on the hill, where the richest contemporary treasure trove in the Carpathian Basin was found: ornate sabers, belt buckles, shield plates, and even Byzantine and Western European jewelry were uncovered from the graves.

We pass the village built on the slight sandy ridge, then descend back to the plain on the northern side of the hill on the asphalt road leading to Slovakia. From this slight elevation, the surrounding mountains offer a good view. The outlook opening at the edge of the Great Hungarian Plain is especially striking as we can follow with our eyes far away volcanic groups of the Tokaj-Eperjes Mountains, including the Szalánc Mountains stretching beyond the border.

Felsőberecki–Sátoraljaújhely

We return to the border line, which again follows the Felsőberecki Channel, and then track this path to the namesake settlement. We enter the quiet small village of Felsőberecki at the pumping station of the canal draining water from the northwest part of Bodrogköz. The 1896-built industrial monument is impressive and venerable. Behind it, we pass the cemetery; at the fence opposite the cemetery is a hospitality unit where we stamp and can rest while consuming our refreshments.

The route continues on top of the flood protection embankment surrounding the river, offering a nice view of the village and the surrounding oxbow lake. From the embankment road, we mainly see the impenetrable green wall of the floodplain forest. Narrow windows open to the water surface here and there, and on the left, we catch a glimpse of the oxbow separated by regulation from the Bodrog River. We follow the embankment to the bridge connecting Bodrogköz with Sátoraljaújhely.

We cross the slow river near Alsóberecki, where most traffic between Bodrogköz and the regional center passes. Originally primarily linked to its northeastern neighbors, the Trianon border separated the area from the blood circulation of neighboring villages and towns, making the construction of the Bodrog Bridge necessary to connect towards Sátoraljaújhely. The bridge completed in 1928 was destroyed during World War II; its place was taken by the current basket-structure iron bridge built in 1967. There is a rest area nearby. It's worth stopping here briefly to contemplate the ripples on the water surface: beneath us flows most of the precipitation fallen in the Northeastern Carpathians. The Bodrog collects water from the Ondava, Laborc, Ung, and Latorca rivers from Bártfá to Volóc, covering most of Eastern Slovakia and western Transcarpathia.

Turning sharply onto the top of the embankment lined with floodplain poplars against the flow of the Bodrog, we soon reach the mouth of the Ronyva river at the border again. The Trianon border was marked along the small river rising among the Szalánc Mountains so that the railway line between Košice and Upper Bodrogköz could belong to Czechoslovakia.

On the Ronyva embankment, facing the Sátoros Hills, we arrive at the border of Sátoraljaújhely. The captivating mountain group now reveals details like vineyards, holiday homes, and wine cellars dotting the distinctive volcanic cones. We enter the formerly more prosperous industrial area of the town near the old, disused railway bridge. The name Borsiszer shows that II. Francis Rákóczi's birthplace, Borsi, is within arm's reach on the Slovak side.

The marking crosses through the town center, thanks to which we can visit the impressive pedestrian street, the Saint Stephen Church, and the Waldbott Castle, or detour on the K+ marking towards the National Blue Trail, connecting it to the Alföld Blue Trail route. The original direction leads from the center along Kossuth Lajos Road to the train station, where the last stamp marks the end of the long and monotonous walk across the country’s plain.