Hiking around Lünen

So, day II of a long hiking weekend. I could have taken any trail in VRR, but this time, I thought since it would be probably the last hike with corona restrictions (maybe not?), I took a trail in an area that would not quite interest anyone, in the hope that there wouldn’t be too many people joining this time. I entirely failed. Probably I should have warned that the hike wouldn’t be interesting for them to know what they were getting into.

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Zaman and I simply followed the same strategy as last time: walk as fast as we can. This was particularly important, as there was really nothing interesting at the beginning of the hike today, going through the city. I wondered what the first time participants thought of it when they saw it.

Just like every year, we’re suffering from heat wave which somehow covers Europe some time before summer, like in June or early July. Today, going through Lünen, I really had to wonder why we had to go such a trail under the brilliant sun. There were small ponds here and there, but just like everywhere in this region, it was really not a kind of water that you’d ever want to touch. I didn’t bring swimming stuff today, which is something I usually simply have with me in summer. Good that I didn’t have it, as thinking about entering that water itself disgusted me.

Well, when we were more or less reaching the half point, things started to get better. We could start walking in a forest. That offered some relief. And it was not exactly flat, even if we could not possibly call it a hike. One way or other, we were so far away from most of the people, that they couldn’t have complained anyway.

We had a break in a small village on the way, with a couple of restaurants there, but no bank nearby. The problem with money in Germany is that credit cards or debit cards are usually not accepted, so that if you don’t have cash, you simply cannot buy anything. This was very much the case for this one restaurant, so that I couldn’t really order much. Fortunately, Kai had some money and I could get a pizza, which was quite vital to me since after yesterday’s hike I couldn’t prepare anything for today’s hike.

While we were having a break in the restaurant, the rest of the group caught up, and they had already left when we started walking. Actually we didn’t see them until we reached the train station. I guess this was good, regarding the fact that no one was probably particularly enjoying today’s trail.

From this village to the end of the hike was again somewhat forestal, but not quite interesting. I guess the landscape was not quite different from what you’d expect in Duisburg, but there at least there are beautiful lakes, where you can swim. Today, we were in a small fraction of forest in the middle of never ending fields. What were we doing there?

At least Lünen was not an overly small city. At the end the ones who were with me, only 10 of us, could have ice creams. This was the only one place where we could get a group photo. Considering the corona situation, maybe it was good to have a group photo like this one.

So, Zaman and I declare that this was the second worst hike ever, after the one in Weeze. There may have been other ones when we started hiking three years ago that were actually worse than today’s one, but at least among the recent ones this was definitely a horribly disappointing one. This being said, it may have been biased by the temperature, as it was really uncomfortable to be in the sun today. Maybe we could use today’s trail in winter, even though I wouldn’t do it myself anymore.