Hiking from Langenberg to Neviges!

It’s been a couple of weeks that Düsseldorf is seeing a relatively unstable weather (“relatively unstable” in this region means “very unstable”). God bless weekends that it is spared when hikes take place.

As I said last week, I talked about the possibility of going somewhere over a weekend with Bhagyashree. Despite my mixed feelings after the cooking evening, I did start looking into it more in detail. So far, I heard that Moselsteig, which is along the river Moselle, is a very beautiful trail and is at a good distance from this region. It is frustrating to see that there are only a handful of hotels that offer the possibility of staying with something like 10 or 15 people. Still, I found a youth hostel in Traben-Trarbach. After another short intensive discussion with Bhagyashree, we decided to book it for 15 people, which is in my opinion quite an ambitious number, but probably we can still find so many people.

The post on Facebook saw explosive reactions of excitement. It’s true that there have been quite some people who had suggested an organized hike over a weekend (which I had consistently refused to do, as I was myself not sure of being capable of doing so). So yes, here you are, I am myself quite excited about it.

Well, so far so good, the discussion started to make a slightly wrong turn, as many of them were just suggesting another kind of trip, like a different section of Moselsteig or a conceptually different trip, and did not say whether they want to join or not. As I already stated above, the only one hostel that I could found was in Traben-Trarbach, so I don’t think it’s a good idea to do a different section this time (but we’ll certainly try to organize another session). And if they want to go sightseeing or so, I would say it’s up to them, but still the very first thing we have to know is for what I proposed if they want to join or not… Well, I’ll try to get the exact number of people next week and see whether we can really make it or not.

If you have been following my blog, you certainly know that the region around Wuppertal was closed down in summer. As a consequence, all the hikes we did in July and August were in flat places. Finally now in September, we can go everywhere by train. You cannot imagine how much I was looking forward to this moment. So, this time, we hiked from Velbert-Langenberg to Neviges. We actually have already hikes in Neviges (cf. this article), which was one of the best ones.

It’s been quite a couple of weeks that I’m arriving late in the morning. Some people, especially when they come for the first time, apparently get really confused. Hopefully they get used to it (or someday I come in time).

People are clearly coming back from their vacations now, as we were already more than 30 this time. Also probably the weather helped a lot as not only it was sunny, but also the temperature was also quite good. A bit chilly, but perfect for a hike. I personally wasn’t really expecting such a high turn up. So just as the last couple of sessions, I didn’t really check out the trails beforehand, which I should have this time, because there was an important segment where we had to walk along the main street. And honestly, it was not nice.

Nevertheless, it appeared to me like a whole new experience to go up hill, to see a beautiful grass field around me, like in Heidi.

There’s this farm/café, Hof zur Hellen, where Mina worked previously with wwoofing. As I heard quite some positive things about this place, I put off the break until this place, even though it took quite some time until we arrived there. And it was quite worth stopping there. Just as last week, the café did not have an apparent fence, which allowed us to be on a nice green carpet, even though we had good access to the café.

The rest of the trail was just amazing. Actually we were again doing part of Neanderlandsteig. Usually, the path is somewhat better recognizable, but this time it happened several times that we were on an exploration, looking for a possibility of making our way. Even though this was not quite true, as the tags were also everywhere, the feeling of unraveling the mystery was fascinating.

Just as last week, we went to the city center to look for an ice cream shop. This was it was pretty much the same. We used to go to a bar or a beer garden but I guess it’s nice to have a choice between a beer and an ice cream. Well, next week, the hike will end in Mülheim, where there’s a beer festival afterwards, so we won’t have a choice probably. 🙂

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