A family favourite in central Europe

"This place is like heaven for Hungarians," says our guide Gabor Torocsik, as our railway carriage trundles up the narrow-gauge line into the hills above Szilvasvarad. "To us, the hills are something magic."

The forested slopes would not strike the average mountain-dweller as anything extraordinary. But all things are relative, and it seems that Hungarians - whose landscapes tend towards the pancake-flat - go mad for their hills.

Certainly the Bukk National Park, near Miskolc, in north-east Hungary, is a lovely day out. We hop off at the end of the line and stroll down the trail through stands of oak and beech, waterfalls and trout ponds glinting through the green.

I detect a certain nostalgia in this yearning for the uplands. On an ancient map at park HQ, Gabor traces for us the great expanse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before the 1920 Treaty of Trianon gave away 72 per cent of Hungary to the neighbours.

"You saw those hills as we drove in?" He gestures beyond the forests towards the border with Slovakia. "All that used to be Hungary."

Eger's impressive castle is a monument to past glories: it was behind these walls in 1552 that some 2000 gallant townspeople held out against an 80,000-strong Ottoman army. Gabor explains how the ramparts are now an important symbol of national pride.

My daughter is not overly concerned about the slings and arrows of Hungary's historical fortunes. To any Harry Potter aficionado a castle is a castle, and this one has hidden cannons, tunnels, and a noisy replica of the defenders' ingenious "firing machine": a wine barrel that they stuffed with gunpowder and bullets and sent down the slopes of the castle to rout the invaders.

Eger and its surroundings offer treats galore for a nine-year-old. First, there are horses: our lunch at Szilvasvarad overlooks a paddock of Lipizzaners, and afterwards my daughter takes the reins of a horse and cart as we trundle through the forest. Then the sweets: Eger's confectionery museum houses everything from ballet shoes to bibles, all created from sugar paste and tempera glaze by confectioner Lajos Kopcsik.

In Eger's Szepasszony Valley, "the valley of the beautiful women", the goodies are more consumable.

Here, the soft volcanic tufa that underlies much of the town is honeycombed with 130km of wine cellars. In the chilled vaults of cellar 36, local vintner Tamas Sike treats us to a tasting.

"We cellar-keepers know three types of wine," he tells me, as we progress from a 2008 bikaver (bull's blood) to a syrupy 2009 late harvest.

By glass number nine, I am laughing at pretty much anything he says, and have begun to acquire the rosé-tinted spectacles that clearly explain the district's name.