Hiking around Schwerte!

It did indeed rain last week. And it actually made me believe that the sunny days were over for this year, because winter is simply horrible in Germany. So I decided to organize a rather rain-proof one with asphalted roads mainly, which led me to the hike in Schwerte. This strategy turned out to be horribly wrong: endless blue sky, like the one you would see at the Mediterranean sea. All this was probably because of the hurricane Ophelia, that’s going over Ireland right now.

In such a situation, it was not quite surprising that the number of participants skyrocketed in the last moment. The surprise was maybe the fact that there were only 2 people that arrived in time at Düsseldorf Hbf. (and of course I was not one of them). And on the way to Schwerte, we were getting more and more people. And in the end we were about 40 people. It’s been quite a while since we saw so many people last time.

Actually today’s trail came from the book that I had borrowed from Felix, who is a coworker of mine. I copied some of the trails, although none of them really convinced me at that time. Still incredulous, I decide to try out this one today. Maybe I discover something positive.

From the main station, we crossed the city going through the city center, which took maybe 10 minutes. Essentially from that moment on, we were in the nature. So far it was good. We had then a very common problem of this region: bicycles. It was certainly not a good choice to walk in a very flat place, especially on asphalted roads, but it is extremely annoying to hear the ringing all the time. Some of them quite excessively. We really have to think about a better solution next time. Today, I was rather near the end of the group. I could hear the conversation of the cyclists coming from the opposite direction: “they were all foreigners.”. This happens every now and then, but it must be really weird for them to see so many foreigners in such a small place.

On the map above, we walked clock-wise. There was no reason to do so. Soon, I had to regret my decision: there was a very nice café along the Ruhr river, but it would have been too early to have a break there. If we had walked other way around, that would have been the perfect location.

Anyway, we walked further. You may already know that the region along the Ruhr river is one of my favorite, even if this one did not particularly impress me. Anyway, appropriately enough, we could find a very nice grass field in the middle of nowhere, just as the one we saw in Witten. Just as at that time, we were wondering if the inhabitants would call complain or call the police, because in Germany everything is illegal in principle, although it’s apparently not so strict in this region. For example, along theRhine, it is actually forbidden to do BBQ, but everyone does it. It’s unimaginable in other regions in Germany.

It’s been some time since we had to look for shadow during the break. Probably it was the last time this year.

The rest of the trail was better than the beginning. Actually I probably should have taken more from this part of Schwerte. Maybe next time, we can go simply southwards from Schwerte, so that we can also walk along the Ruhr. Anyway, Felix’s book was just as I thought it would be like. There was no particular surprise. I just wonder, what it would be like, if I write a book about the hiking trails in this region.

The city center of Schwerte was not bad for after-hike, but because of the weather there were a lot of people at the ice cream parlor. And again, everyone was looking at us. So nice 🙂

The trail can be downloaded from this link (kml-format) or this link (gpx-format)