29/04/2015 It was a 150km cross-country drive to the lake:although the roads were minor ones they were all good.The landscape was very similar to ,say,Herefordshire or Shropshire with hilly farmland, lots of woods, and little country towns.
Lake Balaton is one of Hungary’s leading tourist spots.It’s a huge lake,77km long,14km wide,but it’s very shallow at just 3 metres,unlike the large Balkan lakes,Skadar(44 metres) and Ohrid(288 metres). As a result of being so shallow the water gets very warm and is popular for swimming,as well as all the other watersports.It doesn’t look particularly inviting to me,being an opaque eau-de-nil colour(grey-green).The natural lakeshore is reed beds,but many artificial sand beaches have been made.Dotted along the shore there seem to be marinas,holiday parks,golf clubs etc, and most towns have a vintage steamer or two moored up at a jetty.Confusingly,most towns along the shore are prefixed with ‘Balaton’ hence Balatonzeped,Balatonzemes,Balatonzarszo are just a few of many,making navigation by road signs alone near impossible.
I arrived at the south end of the lake at Keszthely,a town with a population of about 20,000 .I specifically went to visit Festetics castle,a Baroque palace built by a wealthy industrialist and social climber around 1800.One of the family hobbies was breeding racehorses, and they also seemed to do a lot of hunting. One of the Festhetics married a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton in the 1800's and judging by the family portraits she introduced them to the Victorian British upper classes’ pastime of being painted wearing tartan attire.The house was reasonably interesting and I was a little surprised that much of the family’s furniture and so on was still there given that they were booted out in 1944(by which point the contemporary Festhetic had married a Polish Countess) and it has been in state hands since. The place wasn’t quite up to National Trust standards but they are doing a vigourous renovation of the garden;at present it’s at the JCB stage so not too attractive.There was a big library,with a collection of (I was told)important manuscripts and books.In the massive stables,built in a similar style to the house, was a display of about 200 coaches of all types, and as a reminder of the harshness of central European winters, there were also about 20 horse drawn sleighs. Finally,across the road there is a hunting museum, which I skipped,but (oddly) above this is a most impressive model railway filling a 40 metre hall, and that I did have a look at. I think it is sponsored by Marklin (a German manufacturer)
Lake Balaton is one of Hungary’s leading tourist spots.It’s a huge lake,77km long,14km wide,but it’s very shallow at just 3 metres,unlike the large Balkan lakes,Skadar(44 metres) and Ohrid(288 metres). As a result of being so shallow the water gets very warm and is popular for swimming,as well as all the other watersports.It doesn’t look particularly inviting to me,being an opaque eau-de-nil colour(grey-green).The natural lakeshore is reed beds,but many artificial sand beaches have been made.Dotted along the shore there seem to be marinas,holiday parks,golf clubs etc, and most towns have a vintage steamer or two moored up at a jetty.Confusingly,most towns along the shore are prefixed with ‘Balaton’ hence Balatonzeped,Balatonzemes,Balatonzarszo are just a few of many,making navigation by road signs alone near impossible.
I arrived at the south end of the lake at Keszthely,a town with a population of about 20,000 .I specifically went to visit Festetics castle,a Baroque palace built by a wealthy industrialist and social climber around 1800.One of the family hobbies was breeding racehorses, and they also seemed to do a lot of hunting. One of the Festhetics married a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton in the 1800's and judging by the family portraits she introduced them to the Victorian British upper classes’ pastime of being painted wearing tartan attire.The house was reasonably interesting and I was a little surprised that much of the family’s furniture and so on was still there given that they were booted out in 1944(by which point the contemporary Festhetic had married a Polish Countess) and it has been in state hands since. The place wasn’t quite up to National Trust standards but they are doing a vigourous renovation of the garden;at present it’s at the JCB stage so not too attractive.There was a big library,with a collection of (I was told)important manuscripts and books.In the massive stables,built in a similar style to the house, was a display of about 200 coaches of all types, and as a reminder of the harshness of central European winters, there were also about 20 horse drawn sleighs. Finally,across the road there is a hunting museum, which I skipped,but (oddly) above this is a most impressive model railway filling a 40 metre hall, and that I did have a look at. I think it is sponsored by Marklin (a German manufacturer)
Festhetics Kastely, in Keszthely, near Lake Balaton
After leaving Keszthely I drove for 60km around the shore of the lake to the town of Balatonfured which apparently was the earliest and poshest resort on the lake, where the Austro-Hungarian rich built themselves villas. There is a very pleasant tree line boulevard along the lakeshore, but it’s very touristy in parts, with fast food joints as well as more upmarket things such as the Royal Balaton yacht club .I stopped for the night on a resort campsite on the shore nearby.
Lake Balaton
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