Hiking around Herchen

Technology is (sometimes) really great. Now as we move ahead, I sometimes really feel it. I’m basically talking about the new chat bot that I wrote recently, which creates hiking events automatically. Now you can see different announcements on my website, in the telegram message, in the telegram group and on Facebook. It’s fun looking at different messages, but somehow this new bot seems to enjoy the same joke “Sunday Funday hike”, which appeared so many times. I cannot stand it anymore.

Rahul requested a river for this weekend, as it is now somewhat hot these days, even though it’s not really comparable to the last summer or so when it was too hot to go anywhere. There are some places in NRW where you can hike and swim, but this river, Sieg, is a handy option since it’s relatively clean everywhere and there are a lot of train stations nearby. In addition, it’s super easy to make hikes there as it’s hilly everywhere. The only drawback is that it’s difficult to find a good place for a break, because it’s also not a densely populated area and there’s usually pretty much nothing on the way. Today, I didn’t really plan a place for a break.

Nevertheless, quite a large number of people joined (yet again). I would say we now reached the pre-corona level again. I heard again that the Cologne group is shrinking rapidly. I can imagine that the organiser there is not particularly happy about me organizing free hikes, because that would mean reduced donations.

Yet again I was about to miss the train this morning. Somehow my brain seems to enjoy the last minute suspense. I’m sure I’m gonna miss the train one day (it has never happened so far).

The train station of Herchen was not quite in the city itself, so we did not see a lot of civilisation, but somehow it took us some time to enter the nature. Once inside the nature, it was green everywhere. This area is quite massively green. You can potentially plan a hike without leaving forests at all.

There were also a lot of E-mountain bikes along the way. You could see them quite easily because usually they are fairly noisy. I’m definitely happy that they are cycling instead of going somewhere by car, but I also have the feeling that they should first learn how to cycle properly.

Anita keeps finding weird plants on the way. Today she found this jumping flowers. You touch the flower and it jumps away. I guess that’s a way to distribute the seeds efficiently?

This area is generally not really complicated. Today’s hike was also not going up and down so much, but somehow it was quite wild today. It was kind of wilderness I would expect in places like Hagen, but not quite here in Bergisches Land.

Maybe because I have rather heavy trousers I was walking behind. People found a good place for a break in front of a beautiful field. Unfortunately there was no shadow, and even though it’s not the hottest day we have ever experienced, we still wanted some shadow every now and then, especially the sun was out, which was not quite often though. Anyway we had a break in two different locations. Today somehow I decided to take my picnic blanket, which turned out to be quite helpful. Maybe I should do it every time.

The berries are now totally ready. Some of them have actually even started to rot. Anyway I could get so many berries on the way that I sometimes had to stop for a few minutes just for this reason.

The forest here was typically massive, but there were some barren locations as well. I got the feeling that in many places which were affected by the drought of some years ago have now been well treated, but here maybe it’s not quite the case yet. Overall I have to say it was not particularly beautiful here. It’s a pity.

So as I had announced, we could go to the river and swim there a little bit. The water along the Sieg, as I already stated, is relatively clean, even though it usually doesn’t look so inviting. Still, I think it was a really nice moment that made a huge highlight of the day. Even though it was not extremely hot, a lot of people entered the water. Anita was even swimming for quite a distance, although the water was just 50 cm high. There was also a beer garden nearby, and some people combined the two, saying it was a bit like a real vacation. That’s nice to hear XD