Hiking around Letmathe Dechenhöhle

So I came back from Greece yesterday. I had a possibility to organize a hike today, but since Rahul was interested to do so, I let him do it. After two weeks of really hot weather in Greece, I was expecting a more moderate temperature. I was wrong – we got the massive 32 degrees. It was still an exception, but I can feel that Europe is getting warmer and warmer every year.

Anyway I’m glad that Rahul decided to include swimming to today’s hike, even though for some reason he decided to put it at the beginning. That was probably because he planned a hike first without swimming, which I then suggested to change to include an area for swimming in the Lenne, while he didn’t change the direction of the hike. As many of us then asked to change the direction in the morning, he changed it.

We took a train shortly after 9am today and started hiking around half past 10. That was pretty early, but maybe it wasn’t so bad since we basically got more time for swimming.

We have been to Iserlohn a few times before, but today was the first time that we stopped in Letmathe, which is on the way from Hagen to Iserlohn. Actually right after we started hiking I understood why we hadn’t been there: There was a nice patch of nature at the beginning, but there was a lot of asphalt through the entire day. I guess you can kind of see it in the statistics above.

Together with today’s temperature, it was not easy to walk in the beginning when there were not so many trees. It was just so much nicer whenever we were in the forest. It didn’t really feel like it was reaching 32 degrees.

Maybe because of the temperature, not so many people joined today. Somehow it was a huge boys’ club today. It happens every now and then.

I was probably still feeling somewhat tired from the trip. I didn’t want to talk with a lot of people. There was hardly anyone joining today for the first time, and I was not the organizer, so I also didn’t feel the pressure (which I hardly feel anyway) to talk to anyone specifically.

We had a short break on top of the first hill, where there was also a restaurant. There was also a tower which people could climb up for free. I just simply stayed on the ground, which is a rather rare case for me.

There was also a lot of up and down today. At some point it felt like we were going up just forever. I was sweating like infinitely in this heat. There was also a swimming pool in someone’s garden. It just looked so great.

We found quite a lot of fruits on the way. There was this one plum tree where we kept eating and eating. It was just ripe and tasted so great. There were also berries along the way, so many that we had to stop eating even though there was a lot remaining.

We had actually one more break in the middle, before we reached the swimming point. This one basically became the main lunch break. I had had my bread in the first break, so I just simply waited for the others.

So it was actually the 3rd break at the Lenne. Just like last time, a lot of people were prepared to go to the water. While outside was really hot, the water was very cold. Especially, it was very clean, which is one great thing about the Sauerland.

I stayed in the water as long as I could. I knew that it was too cold for me to stay there forever. In the meantime we also went to the other side, and I saw a lot of fish there. That’s a pretty good sign.

Afterwards I simply slept at the riverside. Other people stayed longer in the river. Some people were completely far away from the river all the time. Eyeyey

I totally cooled down in the river, but almost as soon as we started hiking again, there was this huge slope which we experience every time. We were totally wet again, but this time with sweat. But it’s also worth it because you get a great view over the river. We also took our group photo there.

Today, I took my 2 L water bag and 330 mL bottle. I thought it was enough, but it totally wasn’t. I finished all my water and was still thirsty. I was apparently not the only one with this problem, and asked at a local house for water. I got some as well, in my small bottle, and that was not really enough but it still helped me a lot.

On the way we realized that there was nothing around the train station of Letmagen Dechenhöhle, so we decided to go one stop farther, to Letmathe, just for ice cream. As we were not really interested in the final part, which was basically asphalted all the way, we took a bus. There was also a town festival going on, which means horrible food and out-of-tune singers in Germany. We took ice cream and simply walked around a little bit. Then we took a train back to Düsseldorf.