The perfect time for adventurous experiences, discovering the beauty of adrenaline-filled moments in the Beyond the Mountains, Beyond the Valleys region. Numerous mountain and road cycling routes call for trips on two wheels. All you have to do is get on a bike, pedal, and let yourself be guided by the natural beauty of the mountains and valleys. For a view from a different perspective, choose a noble or swift horse ride. Equipped with a helmet, harness, and fall arrest gear, set out to push your limits on via ferrata routes.

Wood used to be floated down the Hron River; today, paddlers take to the old waterways and enjoy the calm and faster sections of the streams. Active summer in the Banská Bystrica Region promises not only adventure and adrenaline, but also the pleasure of nature’s beauty and overcoming your own limits.

Every year, Active Summer turns into an active autumn on a bicycle. The LET’S GO BIKING challenge guarantees great prizes, but above all amazing cycling trips. The special Outdooractive platform delights bikers and hikers alike. If you don’t know which part of the region to conquer by bike or on foot, switch
to the app.

More than: 168 tips for cycling trips and 40 tips for educational trails, plus plenty of tips for great active trips in the Banská Bystrica Region, are available for free and without registration and can also be downloaded to your smartphone from the Outdoor Active platform on the website: www.zahoramizadolami.sk

Beyond the mountains, beyond the valleys… or where sand used to flow and water was poured. That is the Banská Bystrica Region. We have mountains and in winter water falls from the sky for us. And this is exactly what we need to offer you the real active winter. In our region it lasts 350 kilometres. That’s how many routes for skiing and cross-country skiing we have here.

Ski resorts are ready from the first flake to the last snow to offer the best family skiing. Winter hiking trails will lead you to places from which you can embrace the entire frozen landscape with your eyes. Adrenaline lovers will discover the charm of ice climbing, and dog sledding will also provide a proper dose of excitement.

More than 65 cross-country skiing trails with technical parameters and the option to download them to your phone free of charge and without registration can be found on the Outdooractive platform at: www.zahoramizadolami.sk

LET’S GO CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING
A challenge that accompanies you every winter. You need to go cross-country skiing, post photos with the correct hashtags #hybajnabezky #zahoramizadolami, and then watch to see whether you are the one who has won one of the great prizes. Don’t cross-country ski? No problem, we will teach you.

More than 60 tips for your unique cross-country wanderings can be found in the LET’S GO CROSS-COUNTRY SKIING section.

The approaching twilight is not a sign for us to go to sleep, but a promise of new experiences, adventures, and knowledge. That is when we set out on the road and move to places we call a night sky park. With experts from the Maximilián Hell Regional Observatory and Planetarium in Žiar nad Hronom and their professional equipment, we experience what is not ordinary. Holding our breath, we slowly immerse ourselves in a sea of stars and become part of something otherworldly.

Experiences that are not forgotten and surprises that will enchant you. The Moon normally shines in the sky, but in the Banská Bystrica Region it also shines on the ground. The huge Moon model – Lunalón – lights up on the roof of the planetarium during the summer and during dark nights also at castles along the Hron River.

In the BEYOND THE MOUNTAINS, BEYOND THE VALLEYS region, many local craftsmen and farmers, working diligently and with respect for the skills and customs of our ancestors, create products that are unique in their message directed toward traditions. Get to know this region through the tastes, scents, and beauty of products that are seasoned with love and filled with the energy of work in sun-drenched meadows and fields. Get to know the region’s traditions, adopt them, so that you too can help preserve them for the next generation.

Noble people who love traditions and know the value of old crafts do a great deal, from the depths of their hearts, to ensure that they are preserved for a long time to come. A refined combination of experience and tradition has given rise to craft courses, where every enthusiast, admirer, and curious visitor can learn a craft.

How to throw your own clay mug, how to make a rug on old looms, how to embroider a stylish belt with a crooked needle are just a few possibilities from the varied offer of unique experiential courses on our website: www.zahoramizadolami.sk

If you want to buy products with the soul of the Banská Bystrica Region, we invite you to the online shop at: www.regionalnepulty.sk

The Banská Bystrica Region has lived two lives since time immemorial. One above ground and one underground. There is no region in the area that has nothing in common with underground wealth. The Coburg Iron Route in Horehronie, golden Kremnica, silver Banská Štiavnica, copper Banská Bystrica. The Geopark in Novohrad and in central Slovakia. The center of the mining industry during the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Gemer, Potter’s fire engine in Pohronie. And last but not least, the liquid treasure from the inside of the earth – thermal healing waters.

Take courage and enter the underground, where cool air will breathe on you. In the atmosphere of almost complete darkness and the golden reflections of ores, you will hear the clatter of miners’ tools. Mining museums, preserved adits, and events organized by active miners will truly enchant you, pleasantly surprise you, and satisfy your curiosity.

Perhaps there in the bowels of the earth you may even meet the mine goblins. Should you fear them, or let them go their own way? Ask the brave miners.

The Banská Bystrica Region is and has always been a place where many great, interesting, and perhaps even groundbreaking things have always happened. Things that have left a mark even on the lives of us, the contemporaries. One only needs to look at the many industrial monuments whose function significantly contributed to the development of the region’s areas.

Architects, painters, artists, poets, and writers who became famous far beyond the borders of the Banská Bystrica Region, indeed even across the big pond, come from this region. Their traces in our region point to a great concentration of human ingenuity, resourcefulness, talent. The results of their work influenced our lives, and now we walk with admiration through the places where they left their mark.

More than 40 educational trails in the Outdooractive platform will guide you through traces of history and beautiful nature. From them, you will surely choose your walking wanderings through the Banská Bystrica Region in search of famous personalities, scientific curiosities, or natural phenomena. Today mysterious and forgotten, once successful and sought-after places of Austria-Hungary and the famous tsarist dynasty are connected by the little-known Coburg Iron Route.

The Gothic Route is also experiencing a rebirth. Treasures are hidden behind the walls of Gothic churches: medieval wall paintings and frescoes. Since April 2022, 12 churches in the Gemer and Malohont region, as a serial site, have held the prestigious European Heritage Label. It is the first and so far only site with this label in Slovakia.

Their walls could tell stories of the people who built them, who lived in them, or who appeared in them at least for a short time. Castles, manor houses, and chateaux in the Beyond the Mountains, Beyond the Valleys region hide stories of times long past. Some are full of love, others of battles and animosity. Some are cheerful, and many perhaps never even happened, but are passed down through generations only as mysterious legends.

Today we can walk and discover what their courtyards or ramparts have to tell us and glimpse the world they live in today. The royal
and noble inhabitants have been replaced by present-day people who, through tireless work, open up the past and bring it closer to the present. Set out with us to discover the secrets of these places.

The Pohronie Castle Route consists of 16 castles that once protected the road to the rich mining towns. Even today they stand proudly along the Hron River. Some are ruins, some only fragments hidden beneath layers of earth.

Fortunately, lively life still pulses behind the walls of the castles in our region – thanks to determined volunteers, devoted castle lords, visitors, and also thanks to digital technologies. Be sure not to miss, for example, Revište Castle, where you will learn about its past through augmented reality. It connects its present form with the way it looked at the height of its prosperity, in the 17th century.

Slow down and watch from the window the charm of the closeness of nature and the distant hills that you have laid out before you. Add to that a touch of nostalgia and peaceful as well as cheerful moments leading to the most beautiful experiences. The Beyond the Mountains, Beyond the Valleys region is interwoven with unique railway lines. Historic trains set out on their tracks, in which you can prepare for an unusual ride. Just sit down and let yourself be carried into unknown lands.

Guides will, as if by the wave of a wand, transport you back in time. To history and hard work in the ironworks of Horehronie, to the glassmaking craft in Novohrad, or to times when no one could be sure that bandits would not rob them.

The family of nostalgic expresses is growing. After all, the diversity of the Banská Bystrica Region and its famous railway history easily provide unique themes. Against the current of the Hron, the Glassmaking Express will take you in search of glassmaking history; through the darkness of 34 tunnels, the 34 Tunnels Express will guide you, of course. Across the entire region, the Beyond the Mountains, Beyond the Valleys Express will take you for a ride and treat you to refreshments. Which one of them do you think we call the Banská Bystrica “Orient Express”?

The Beyond the Mountains, Beyond the Valleys region, created by Mother Nature, where you can feel the power and energy of the earth’s elements. Where human feet have also stepped and left their traces across history. Ancient mountains, wilderness, vast plains, and picturesque valleys, where many living creatures coexist and many diverse flowers grow.

And silence and peace reign here, refreshing the human mind and soul. For the heart of Slovakia, the uniqueness of living nature is characteristic, as 5 national parks meet here. Majestic and wild Poľana and 3 unique geoparks reveal unique opportunities to discover the transformations of the region triggered by rich volcanic activity millions of years ago.

If you want to discover life in nature with us, choose one of the trips guided by experts. You can find them on our website: www.zahoramizadolami.sk