Hiking from Remscheid to Schwelm!

Today, in the morning, there were quite some people saying their trains were having a delay. Everywhere, I essentially said that we wouldn’t wait, until we found out that the Essen group was also late. Since we were going to Remscheid, it was too dangerous to ignore the people from Essen, since by doing so, we would virtually ignore all the people from the Ruhr region. Even though the event always starts from Düsseldorf and therefore the largest proportion comes from there, the chunk from the Ruhr region is not to ignore anymore these days. This just reflects the importance of this region in this country…

Since the train station where we started was already outside Remscheid, we could directly start walking in the forest after the train station. It was hot. It’s not even June yet and it’s been hot all the time.

Because of the extended weekend, I was expecting a low turnout, which was more or less true. So, I took a fairly long trail today, with some up and down on the way. With this temperature, we were probably lucky that there almost only those who join us regularly. Still, some people started grumbling on the way before the break.

We had a break at Beyenburg, but a few hundred meters before the spot where I wanted to have a break, because obviously some people were too exhausted to make any step further. Ben had brought his guitalele today. After the hit last time when there was a ukulele, we could have expected a similar hit today, but due to the low number of people, and especially because the Latin people were missing, it came short today. I guess I’ll bring a guitar next time if there’s Hernán coming (who now calls me “Depacito man”).

After the break, I talked to this new guy, Adrià from Barcelona. He spoke fluent German, but started to learn French only recently. He was telling me it’s difficult to find a place to speak French, or to find French people to talk to. Today, essentially I became his tandem partner on the way. It made me want to speak Spanish on the other hand. So we talked something like 30 min in French and then 30 min in Spanish and so on. In the end, I talked only with him until the end of the day after the break.

The destination of today’s hike was Schwelm, which has a cozy city center with an ice cream parlor. I usually have an ice cream or a glass of beer, but never both of them at the same time, which I did today for the first time. I feel like Sheldon for thinking I was making a crazy step by doing so.

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