Hiking around Dattenfeld Castle

These days, you probably already know that I’m not organising quite as many hikes as before anymore, because many of them are taken over by other people. This was very much the case today, as Rohith decided to organize a hike, probably also because he needs some warmup for his trip to Slovenia. Anyway I’m always happy when there are people organising hikes. It feels more and more like a collective decision making body.

There’s this one line super slow line connecting Cologne and Siegen. We took it from Messe/Deutz and went along the river Sieg. It’s a truly beautiful line.

Today, we threw in a new idea: podcast for the train journey. The idea is simple: someone suggests a podcast episode and we listen to it on the way to the hike. I found it interesting because often I find the train journey somewhat boring, and it’s sort of difficult to pick up a conversation with people joining for the first time. This idea would solve these two problems at the same time. This time Anita suggested “50 years of cellphone” from BBC documentary. Unfortunately she and I were the only ones who followed the idea, but it doesn’t matter, because we had a nice discussion anyway.

I think Rohith fully relies on Komoot when he makes trails. It usually does a really good job, but not necessarily always. There was a part at the beginning where we didn’t really know where we were going. We were going up and down really hard, and also through wild areas. Well you can also recognize it on the map above…

But then we had a nicer path after the first part. It was not flat, but there was nothing difficult on the way. There was just one place where it was forbidden to cross, but we went anyway. I don’t know what’s the legal status of this kind of stuff, but here in Germany usually there’s no real problem when you ignore it. And indeed we could cross the area without a problem.

We had a break more or less in the middle of nowhere. Rohith is a kind of person who prefers to have a break in the nature. Well in principle me too, but often I just have the feeling that people need a proper bathroom. Let me know what you think.

There were so many wild berries and other fruits along the way today. We were stopping everywhere. So we were far apart at some point.

Towards the end, we entered the Dattenfeld castle promised in the title, or its ruins. The castle itself was not particularly impressive, but we could climb up the ruins and have fun there.

There was a river at the end of the hike today, because I had asked Rohith to include some refreshing place. And so we went to the Sieg. The water wasn’t as clear as I had hoped, but good enough for us especially in this super warm weather. There was even some kind of water slider there as well.

Amalia and I occupied Rohith’s blanket. We didn’t even realize that everyone had already left. Good news for us was there was one train that got cancelled, so anyway everyone had to wait for us (or the train).

But there was a really nice café nearby, where we could get an ice café. I count it as ice cream as well, and so I call it a perfect day :). Anyway Rohith did a great job today.