Hiking from Walporzheim to Ahrweiler and wine festival!

Davy this week was talking about this wine festival in Ahrweiler, which I was not really aware of. For some reason he didn’t want to do it on Sunday for the whole group, so I basically took over his idea and organized a hike there.

There was a flood a few years ago in this area, and for some time there was no train at all. Now fortunately the railway line got repaired, but only up to Walporzheim, so I created a trail from there. Pity, because there are more interesting trails farther away.

I put the event on Wednesday evening, and it looked like there were not so many people signing up for this event. I thought it was because we were going to take a train really early (8:58 from Düsseldorf), but then somehow the group grew really fast and in the end I guess there were more than 20 people. That doesn’t make it a particularly large group, but still a lot larger than it looked. There were also a lot of new people today. Part of the reason is because again there were more people joining from the Cologne group. It appears to me that the fact that the group existed helped this group to grow.

It looked like the train only served us for Walporzheim, as there was hardly anyone. As the Ahr lies in a valley, it was easy to reach the nature from the train station. There was this massive uphill you can see on the map above. This part looked like it was just never ending.I was involved in a conversation with a new guy, but I could see that some people were already struggling at this point.

The view from the top of the hill was quite rewarding. Today’s group tended to wait for each other quite a lot, and this was the first point where they were waiting. Well people were also busy taking photos so they probably also didn’t really mind waiting there.

After that it was going up and down a little bit, and we were mostly staying in a forest. It was a quite massive one with nice smell. I really enjoyed just being here.

Somewhere towards the beginning, there was this tower, which was open to public, so some of us climbed up and were taking photos, when Ivanna appeared with her drone. I don’t know what kind of photos it was taking, but it looked like it was extremely stable, even though it was quite windy. Maybe it’s really time to consider getting one like that, because we always find it difficult to find a good place to take group pictures.

When we came down, we realized that some people started ordering food in a nearby restaurant. It was such an easy going group today, and people didn’t mind waiting for those people at all.

The soil was getting more and more rocky, a typical vineyard soil. It also gives us a bit of vacation feeling because the soil elsewhere in Germany is usually really rich.

We then left the forest and reached the bottom of the valley again. There we went through a field. It was quite a change from this massive forest, and to be honest it was not particularly interesting, but in the hindsight I think this vast field also gave us its own taste.

We had our main break right next to the river, at the end of this vast field. It was not too hot today, and it was nice to sit there, until the sun appeared. Until then I actually didn’t realize that there were some clouds in the sky, but it was mostly clear, exactly the kind of sky I like when we are hiking, because it’s kind of sunny, but we don’t necessarily get the direct sunlight all the time.

We also took a group photo there. We were also thinking about taking a photo with the drone, but we then decided to do it later in the vineyard (which we didn’t in the end though XD).

The rest of the day was a hike through the vineyards, which is something I like a lot. I kind of left the group in that moment and walked alone, mostly because I hate to see people stealing grapes, which usually happens when we hike in the vineyards in this period of time.

There was even a vending machine for wines. I didn’t know that law allows such a thing XD

I guess these photos are going to be the banner pictures for the upcoming events.

So today’s highlight was this wine festival in Ahrweiler, but you could buy wine everywhere along the way today. There was one stand where we decided to stop and have some wine, because it just looked so right. A glass of rosé for 3€, and it was just amazing. I guess it was the first time that I drank during the hike, and I have to say we should do it again.

Again, I felt really lucky that there were some clouds in the sky, because otherwise we would have been burning in the vineyards.

Towards the end, Ivanna took out her drone again to take some pictures. Unfortunately we were only 4 or 5 people in that moment as most of the people walked a lot faster than us. I’m looking forward to her photos.

The wine festival in Ahrweiler was more like a town festival that we saw last week, with maybe a bit more style. I didn’t really feel like getting more wine, and got French fries instead. Apparently people felt the same way. My French fries went away fairly quickly 😀 Well then I got an ice cream and we went back home and reached Düsseldorf at 8pm. That was a really long day, and I loved it!