Festetics family tour (wine-red A)

1. Route details
This easy barely 14 km long tour is recommended to families with small children and all who want an easy bike ride.
Most of the route leads through inhabited area on high-quality and signed bike route; and in a small part on dirt road in the woods.
The tour is signed in one way that starts at the Festetics Palace. From here you must follow the Festetics wine-red A that leads through the Festetics Zoo to the Nagymező (Great meadow) and to the former quarry. From there we head back toward Keszthely on the Balaton Bike Route and we reach the town at the bank of Lake Balaton. Going through the Helikon Park, the Main square and the pedestrian street the route gets back to its starting point.
The dashed line on the maps indicates a short (ca. 200 m) dirt and gravel road that is difficult to cross after rain.
Along the route there are several bike shelters and rest places (Csapás street, Festetics Theme Centre, Nagymező, Libás beach) and other places to stop and rest (Nagymező open-air leisure centre, Keszthely banks of Lake Balaton, Main square, Festetics palace garden).
As most of the route leads through populated are, there are several dining, food and other shopping facilities.
This route can be extended by the Festetics wine-red B, C and D tours.

2. Difficulty factors in the tour
Leaving the Nagymező, at the beginning of the sloping section of the former quarry – ca. 80 m – due to the risk of slipping, it is better to push the bike. In rainy weather the area is difficult to cross, so the bike is recommended to be pushed with extra attention and partially applied brakes.
3. Description of the highlights
It is good to be a guest. On this family tour we will visit a very special host – the Festetics family. We can see where they lived, explore their surrounding countryside and discover what kind of animals they kept. On this nice and short round tour we can discover a bit of the extremely rich, imposing and interesting Festetics heritage in Keszthely and in the immediate vicinity of the settlement, Gyenesdiás.
At the beginning of tour or even as its highlighting, the beautiful interior exhibition of the Festetics Palace cannot be missed nor its park reconstructed based on its original state. We can stay longer and feed the deer, goats and sheep in the Zoo which commemorates Imre Festetics who described the basic laws of genetics from the observation of the sheep.
The House of Nature Visitor Centre that gives a glimpse into the natural world of the Keszthely Hills, is located here as well and that can help us to look at the next – forest – stage of the tour with different eyes.
Once the forests of the Hills were part of the Festetics family’s estate. Among other things the Festetics lookout tower which can be reached on a short walk west from the Nagymező, reminds us of this fact of former possession. From here there is a wonderful view to the whole town of Keszthely, we can see the Festetics Palace, the shore of Lake Balaton and the Keszthely Bay as well as a spectacular panorama of the countryside beyond the town and the Keszthely Hills.
The former quarry near the Nagymező is actually a powerful landscape wound that has a special atmosphere. It is good to see that nature is slowly but surely reclaiming what is her.
In the last section of the tour, between the banks of Lake Balaton and the Festetics Palace, the Helikon Park, the Helikon Memorial, the various sights of the Main square as well as the buildings of the Kastély street are all related to the heritage and former activities of the Festetics family in many ways.