At only 315 metres high, the ‘little mountain’ is known only as the Rock or the Big Rock. From the tidy village of Epöl, with its 600 inhabitants, you only have to drive a kilometre on the asphalt towards Máriahalom, then turn left at the farmhouse, heading east, onto the dirt road leading to the rocky top. Stay on the path, as you are in a Natura 2000 priority nature conservation area, or more precisely, a 16 square kilometre complex of several parts called the Epöl Sarmatian Line. These diverse habitats have various rare values. Here, in the immediate vicinity of the Rock, there are dry grasslands and karst scrub forests, but not far away is one of the largest expanses of loess grassland in Hungary, located on the borders of Máriahalom, Bajna, Nagysáp and Sárisáp. The most important habitats and species of European Community importance associated with the area are: Pannonian tufa oak woodlands, calcareous semi-natural dry grasslands and their shrubby variants, important orchid habitats; Pannonian mossy oak woodlands and lowland Pannonian loess grasslands. Among the animal species, it is important to mention the warthog or the mourning crane, the raven nesting on dolomite and limestone cliffs, and among the plants the lady’s mantle or the red snake-grass.
https://www.turistamagazin.hu/blog-bejegyzes-1/festoi-sziklaszirt-epol-hataraban
