Hiking around Jülich and Sophienhöhe!

It’s been more than 7 years since I started organizing hikes and I was feeling I know most of the places for hikes inside NRW. As it turned out, there was a Halde at Jülich I had never been to. As it looked actually pretty good, I decided to organize a hike around there. It’s a pity that I didn’t do it before, because I had a lot of friends around Aachen before.

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It appeared to me like a miracle that we arrived on time today at Düren, where we had to change trains. That’s the same train station as the one when we go towards the Rursee, but this time we were going in the opposite direction. For some reason the departure times was more or less the same, so just like whenever we go towards Heimbach (i.e. Rursee), we were in the train station café and had a late breakfast there.

With the same diesel train we went to Jülich Forschungszentrum where we started hiking. There was one guy who wanted us to wait, and for some reason I decided to wait for him this time.

These stockpiles resulting from coal mining are usually quite sterile. So sometimes it looks extremely sad, which I think was more or less the case in Neuss. In the Ruhr area, on the other hand, they are made quite beautiful, so you can go there and enjoy it very much. My first impression when I was looking at the area was that it was quite green, but I was also not really sure how it was going to be.

The area around the train station was totally flat but green. I had expected it to be flat, which is often the case on the West side of the Rhine, but I didn’t know that it was so green, because it’s mostly farmland there.

When we reached the stockpile, there was clear inclination. From that point on we were steadily going up (as you can easily see on the profile on Komoot above). I got the feeling that it was mostly just forest, more than I had imagined from the fact that it was just a stockpile.

There were multiple places which looked really nice for a break, and it was also getting less and less towards the top, but I’m still happy to have continued till the Sophienhöhe, because it was also a nice area and there was also a small tower.

It was such a great day today – with a lot of sun and moderate temperature. After my lunch, which I had nearly finished on the way (because it was just nuts), I had a super short nap. As a matter of fact, it was difficult because it was too sunny, and not because it was cold. Anyway we hung around there, took some photos and obviously also the group photo.

The way back was a little bit steep, but it added a bit of adventure. Frankly you wouldn’t imagine an area like this around Jülich.

When we arrived in Jülich, we realized that there was plenty of time for the train, so we went to the train station and had an ice cream. There was a huge queue there, as it was the first weekend with a great weather. Summer is coming!