Showing posts with label Hungary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hungary. Show all posts

January 21, 2025

Aggtelek National Park 40th Anniversary, Hungary

 The Aggtelek National Park was established on January 1, 1985, as the fourth national park in Hungary and the first to be created specifically for the conservation of geological and karst natural values, surface formations, and underground caves.

The national park celebrates its 40th anniversary this year and will have special events. Read more on Hungary Today, 20 Jan 2025.

I went to Aggletek in 1983 for the cave rescue conference. I wrote a blog in 2015 as part of my travels through Hungary, but am reposting photos here. Unfortunately I only took a couple of photos inside the cave, at the Baradla end.

Aggletek mountain lake

Hotel Cseppko

Baradla Cave

These photos show a cave rescue demonstation outside Baradla -






January 20, 2015

Hungary Aggtelek area

Having driven across Hungary, (Fertorakos limestone quarry and Tihany and Lillafured ) we finally arrived at Aggtelek for the cave rescue conference. This was Sept-Oct 1983.



Whilst there we visited Baradla. From my diary -
Absolutely excellent cave. Start by following various static(?) pools and a railway line, saw an eel and loads of old stal. This brought us into the huge orchestra chamber. We turned right past the boats and walked a long way through the huge passage and still river. We went to the end of the show bit and then back and up past the orchestra into various chambers with huge Berger style stals. Amazing. On round and through and after 1 1/4 hr came out at the entrance Aggletek (?) at the  back of the campsite. Then walked up over the karst to the cliff top above the cave and back to the hotel.
Excellent. This is Hungary's longest cave at 25 km, although 7 km are in Czechoslovakia (Domica), and beats all English show caves.


Later in the week we did a through trip from Baradla to Josvafo, including Retek - Radish and covered 7 km.

We visited the thermal baths at  Miskolc Tapolca, south of Miskolc. My first visit to a thermal spring and it was really enjoyable. 3 coaches left Aggletek and on arrival we had to wait a few minutes until 6pm, as apparently one is only allowed 1.5 hours in the water as it is healthily radioactive! All changed in big cubicles in one room then went to the water. This was a semilit cave passage, water fairly warm but a lovely surrounding. Air really humid. There was a waterfall in one place with 5 or 6 spouts. I've never seen anything like it. We had found a warm pool and a hot pool, the latter was lovely, almost like a bath. Water just under waist depth. Very enjoyable. We then had dinner in the adjoining restaurant with traditional gypsy violinists. Entrance to the baths -

Our route across Hungary to Aggtelek -

Hungary, Tihany & Lillafured show caves

In 1983, after visiting the Fertorakos stone quarry near the Austrian - Hungarian border at Sopron, we drove across Hungary to the main caving area of Aggtelek. On the way we stopped at some caves.

Our next cave visit was  Forras Barlang. This is at Tihany, which is a peninsula on the north shore of Lake Balaton, the largest lake in central Europe. Earlier we had driven past Badacsonytoma which is located by a volcanic hill. There are basalt rocks.

Tihany Abbey is a Benedictine monastery. Forras Barlang is a little gated cave used as a workman's store.

It seems to be a hydrothermal cave. The cave is located in the forráskúpban, which is the former castle of Tihany, where the abbey church was built.

From Tihany we drove to Budapest. After spending time there we went on to Eger, Monosbel, Dedestapolscany and over the Bukk Mountains which is a national park. We stopped at Omassa to see an iron works museum. Iron processing works started in the 1770s. We then reached Lillafured where we visited show caves.

Lillafured is between Eger and Miskolc. There are 3 caves although we only visited 2.

Istvan Barlang, St. Stephen Cave, is near the Hotel Palota (Palace Hotel) and south of Lake Hamori. The cave drains the surrounding plateau. Now there is electric lighting. Cost about 8p. A good cave, short though well decorated except for all the green algae. 15 min trip, saw some bats.
 



We walked through the hotel grounds to Anna' Cave, Petofi Sandor, (Mesztufa Barlang). It was visited by Sándor Petőfi in 1847, hence the name. It is a tufa cave and we had a private tour with an old lady as guide, she spoke Hungarian/German/French. Very nice with tufa formations and different from most show caves. Did a circular tour. Impressive. -


The 3rd cave which we didn't visit is Szeleta Cave.

We then drove to the industrial town of Miskolc and straight through to Aggletek. We were there for the cave rescue conference.

January 19, 2015

Hungary, Fertorákos limestone quarry

Whilst going through some old photos, I found some from my caving trip to Hungary in 1983. The first cave related site we visited was Fertorákos limestone quarry. This is near the Hungarian - Austrian border at Sopron and the quarry is 7 km from Sopron.



It is an old Roman stone quarry and reminded me of the Bath stone workings. It is Lajta limestone. Quarrying apparently stopped in 1948. Parts of the quarry are open air and there are some underground sections. It is quite impressive with high ceilings and very white rock.






There is an underground theatre/concert hall with a stage.

Read more on Fertorakos page.

See my next 2 blogs on Hungary, Tihany and Lillafured show caves and Aggtelek area.