Hiking around Heimbach

It was already a few weeks ago that we started organizing this weekend’s hike. I was not particularly interested to organize one, but then it turned out that there were only Davy and me. I just knew that I was not really ready to hike a very long distance. So I organized this in a pre-emptive way. In the end that was not really necessary, because he didn’t join. Hm.

I don’t know whether it’s because of the weather or because of the distance from bigger cities, but there were clearly less people signing up for today’s event. This being said, there were still more than 10 people signing up over Meetup, which is an order more than what it used to be before we got a new admin.

Heimbach is probably the most visited train station in the Eifel for us. There’s this famous train connection that would have a changeover time of 40 min at Düren. If you just look at this, you might think it’s just a tedious waiting, but in reality there’s a nice DB café inside the train station of Düren, which is not particularly fancy, but somehow quite comfortable. So we took this connection, and somehow it was also punctual. What a day.

Last week, I destroyed my water pot, so I didn’t have much incentive to take my cooking stuff this time. Besides the weather was supposed to be pretty bad today, so I decided to not take anything with me, in order to be fully water tight in my rain jacket and water tight trousers. While we were approaching Heimbach, the sky was starting to slowly clear out.

When we reached Heimbach, however, it started raining. It was not serious rain, but at some point I started regretting that I wanted it to rain. Fortunately it stopped maybe half an hour later or so.

There was a significant part going along the Rur at the beginning. Then it started going up a hill. In strong contrast to the hikes we usually do in the summer, this time we were going away from the famous lake, where we usually swim whenever it’s warm.

Usually we have only one break in the middle. This time there was clearly nothing for a break in a good place, so I decided to do two breaks at the Maria Kloster, which was lying at around 1/4 and 3/4 of the track, as we were making a crossing there twice. When we first went there, they were serving lunch. It looked more like a canteen there. Anyway we joined them and I had a cup of coffee. There were some tables outside with basically no one there. Since it looked more like a canteen, we simply assumed that no one would complain if we sit there and eat our own food. We were sort of wrong; there was one staff who came out to wipe the rain water and saw the situation. He made a small comment that it was not meant for a picnic place, but still allowed us to stay there. Nice guy.

I was not properly aware of the track after the monastery, but it was following a large street, which made it a bit less quiet and less nature.

There was a small village at the middle. I was glad that we didn’t have a break there. It looked like there was a restaurant there, but not sure whether it was one.

In the second half the weather got a lot better. There were even moments with sunlights. We were also walking more in the nature, so things were definitely getting a lot better.

On the other hand, I have to say the area looked more or less like Solingen. We came all the way to the Eifel, but sadly I think the hike would have been just as nice even if we had stayed around Düsseldorf…

We then had our second break when we came back to the monastery. This time I ordered a cake. It was definitely a canteen cake. As a matter of fact, the coffee was more or less the same this morning. Let’s just call it a canteen. I was anyway happy because the staff were friendly and the place was quite cozy.

By the time we reached Heimbach again, it was getting almost summer-ish – the sun was clearly out, and it was quite warm. We lost our train, but we happened to end up in the Heimbach castle, which I had actually never visited before. It was open to public, and we could climb up to the top of the building. Nice view over the surrounding area. Definitely a must-see spot.

We then had an ice cream in the city center. There’s this one ice cream shop that we always visited whenever we are in Heimbach. It’s not particularly good, but I’m still happy that there is one ice cream shop there. We then stayed in the city until the next train came and went back home.

As we are going to Sardinia next week and then I will run a marathon the week after, I will join the next hike in three weeks. Hilal will be gone by then..