100th hike: Schloss Burg and Müngsten Bridge!

So now, it’s a huge deal: we hiked 100 times since I arrived here in Düsseldorf two years ago. And to be honest, I kind of wonder whether I didn’t have anything better to offer than today’s hike (not that it was particularly bad, though)

Solingen is a region that we visited several times when I first came here. Since there are not so many train stations (actually there’s only one line that goes through this area), I could not plan many hikes, so that lately we didn’t go there very often, in order to avoid repeating the same trails. And a few weeks ago, when I realised that the 100th hike was coming up, I decided to keep this hike aside, since I knew that Solingen is a nice hilly region and there were at least two attractions: Müngsten bridge and Schloss Burg, both of which are somewhat famous around this region, but not that spectacular that it’s not worth spending an entire day there. So it’s a perfect place for a hike like ours.

And finally the weather was just as perfect as the weather forecast was telling. This of course attracted quite a number of people, as you can see on the photo above. Since the total distance was not very low and also the complicated terrain, I wasn’t sure if we still go this trail. In the end, we did the original route.

There was one place that komoot didn’t want us to go which crossed the river Wupper. Since I could clearly see a bridge there, I thought it was an error on the side of komoot. I was wrong. Just as always, the bridge was being repaired, and just as always, it looked very much like it’s been being repaired for years. Well, there’s the airport of Berlin. Compared to this, this bridge was probably full of future.

This detour, along with quite some going up and down must have made it physically challenging, but as for me, it wasn’t much about this, but much more about the landscape: even though we were sometimes on top of a hill, because of the surrounding trees in the middle of this huge forest of Solingen, we couldn’t see much. Actually throughout the day the landscape changed little, so that I got the feeling that we were not making progress.

Schloss Burg, on the other hand, was the perfect place for a break, especially for this number of people. The fact that the weather was good helped also a lot, since this castle offers quite some places outside.

When we arrived at the Müngsten bridge, it was already quite late, so that many of the participants directly headed back home. I stayed at the café right below the bridge. Sitting outside, we were finally enjoying the springlike weather.

You can download the trail from this link (in kml-format) or this link