Hiking from Solingen-Schaberg to Wuppertal!

When there is something people do every week, it may feel extremely weird if it does not happen just one time. I had to wait for this hike with this really weird feeling this week, as last week I cycled to The Hague with Clara. It was anyway really a pity that no one wanted to organize it last week. Apparently I could not convince other people that it is really easy to organize a hike. In the future it’s going to be important, because I’m sure that I cannot forever continue all alone…

The hike in Unterbachersee was the first time that I planned the path entirely. Today’s path was the second one. Actually I accidentally found this path when I was cycling to Schaberg a couple of weeks ago, where I somehow arrived in Wuppertal. Then I decided to cycle along the Wupper. Well, it’s actually anyway not so difficult to create a hiking path around Wuppertal, as the nature offers quite a lot here. It’s just important to know where the railway stations are (and also that it’s still the same train company, because the east of Remscheidt is again a different company).

There were slightly less people this time than usual (32), probably because it was a long weekend. Most of them for the first time, though.

After the last hike from Ronsdorf to Wuppertal, the temperature soared and we saw a couple of days over 30°C. I didn’t think or expect it to continue much more, but still it was quite disappointing to see that today was pretty much the first day with unstable weather, although still it didn’t really rain during the hike, which is already quite suprising for the German standard. And also surprisingly enough, the train did not have a delay at all today. It was like a miracle.

Wuppertal Schaberg is a station, which we can be grateful for, because there is nothing around, only one restaurant and a handful of houses. It is actually important for the Müngsten bridge, which is a famous tourist attraction. But this tourist attraction itself is actually a railway bridge, so Schaberg itself made a tourist attraction. Otherwise I don’t see any reason why it should be there. But of course, for people like us it is a precious station, as we just hae to get out of the station and immediately we are in the middle of a forest.

On the other hand, there was pretty much only forest today, which was maybe not so bad since the weather was not particularly good and the trees hid the sky. But I guess changing landscape is also something a good hiking path should offer. Still, it was a real hike in the sense that we went up and down quite a lot. It appeared to me like a wonder that I managed to bike through this path.

Whenever I organize something on couch surfing, I always notice that locals do not join physical activities (drinking or partying is a different story). A couple of weeks ago, there was no German at all, which of course still was an exception. Today, however, a lot of them joined us. Hopefully this is also going to be a place which helps communication between locals and expats. I guess they liked the hike so we can expect their participation in the future as well 🙂

Today’s trail was supposed to be something like 14 km, which is not particularly long or short. However, as it turned out, it was not even 3 pm when we finished and I did not really have the feeling that we walked so far. I don’t know whether it was because I am now getting used to walking so much or because today’s participants walked so fast or something else, but at least the fear, that I had after the sessions like in Unterbachersee or Drachenfels, is something I guess I don’t have to have all the time, even if I plan the path myself.

A couple of days later, I had an occasion to talk about this region with Charlotte, who arrived in Düsseldorf in April and joined us only once so far. I must say it’s really interesting how much I know now about this region, whereas before coming here, I didn’t even know how the big cities were located in this area. In a couple of weeks, I’ll probably be able to say something about most of the villages around Düsseldorf. Something I’ll have to look at more in detail is how the villages are connected, i.e. how to get there by which train etc. Well, if I get a good hand on it, I might end up being a tourist guide instead of scientist 🙂 I’ll look forward to it (although I love to be a scientist too so it’s not really an option, either).