Hiking around Hagen Dahl

If the summer is meant to come only once, it’s already gone this year. It was a particularly short one. Thank you for having being here.

But again, maybe I shouldn’t complain, because it rained the whole week, while it didn’t today. Sure, it’s April and the weather should get better each day, but it’s also true that it hardly rained on weekend this winter, so today’s weather was actually indeed totally fine.

Download kml / gpx

This area below Hagen, which is the limit of the VRR area, lies on the edge of the Sauerland, which implies it’s actually very hilly and wild. It’s equally hilly in the Eifel, but here the trees are more pointed, and somehow the nature is more chaotic. In addition, the trees have been badly damaged during the drought of a few years ago. Frankly, if I have to choose between the Eifel and the Sauerland, I’d certainly prefer the Eifel. On the other hand, this area is less frequented, so it’s rare that we see a large amount of people. And indeed, we didn’t see anyone today during the hike at all.

There was a long upward slope at the beginning. This area tends to go up and down a lot, but today we were essentially going up until break, and down afterwards. On the way, we could see random valleys, which offered nothing other than the surrounding area, but it was still spectacular to see those.

Maybe because it was quite far away from the major cities, but there were not so many people joining today. Maybe the weather played a role as well. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, both Ukrainians and Russians totally disappeared (except for Bogdan). I’m sure that they have more important things to do, but still it would be nice to see them again, also to smoothen the communication among different nationalities.

There was this highway in the middle of nowhere. Then there was this one restaurant “Haus Becker”, which was closed last time, and today still was. Anyway we had a break in front of the restaurant, on a very large field. For the first time in years, I had my picnic blanket with me, which I had stopped doing because we couldn’t keep the social distance, which now we can look forward to considering a historical term soon.

I might have given the impression that this area is just ugly, but some areas gave really impressive views. Frankly, after seeing this area today, I thought I might have somewhat underestimated the Hagen area. I’m definitely looking forward to coming back and see what it looks like in the summer.