Hiking around Rursee

While I was on vacation for 2 weeks, there was a winter here in Düsseldorf. But then as soon as we came back, the temperature skyrocketed. I don’t quite understand how things work in this country. Anyway, since it was obvious that the weather would stay like this, I decided to organize a hike to the Rursee, where we can usually swim in the lake, but this time the track was going to the south of the lake, so I was not perfectly sure if we would be able to swim there.

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At the same time, the Rursee lies in the Eifel, meaning it’s in a dense forest, so I also really didn’t mind not being able to swim at all.

One problem was obviously the departure time: we had to take a train a bit before 9am. It’s not extremely early, but I might have wished to sleep a bit longer on Sunday. Anyway, I had to run to the train station, only to realise that the train got a 20 min delay. What a great start.

We had a short stop at Düren, where we should have had 40 min transfer time. At least we could have something for the breakfast.

There was a huge group going from Heimbach, which is also where we started. At the beginning we had to cross the city, and frankly I had the feeling that I was being burnt.

But then when things got a lot easier as soon as we reached the forest. Then we stayed in the forest for most of the time. Great

Our first destination was the Marienkloster. It was being rebuilt for quite some time, but today it was fully accessible.

There was one path that was not accessible. I was fearing there’d be more paths like that one, but fortunately it was only this one. Anyway it added a few meters to the track which was already 19 km.

We had a break at the Urfttalsperre, where there’s also a restaurant. I had the feeling when I was there last time, that there was also a possibility to swim there. In reality the water was a lot lower than where we were. Anyway it was actually a beautiful area so I didn’t really mind not going to the water.

We took a photo in front of this one monument. I had the feeling that I was melting.

In the end we didn’t go to the water at all. We took the original path to go back to Heimbach. There was one path which OpenStreetMaps says is for cars as well, but in reality it was also a nice forest path (maybe there are also cars there, but at least not frequently).

There was a nice wooden platform on the way. It’s a pity that it doesn’t lead us anywhere.

We didn’t even have enough time to go for an ice cream in Heimbach. We directly took a train to go back to Düsseldorf. It was already past 7pm when we arrived there, and we had the feeling that we did a huge hike today. Maybe also it was the first one after two weeks of vacation for me, where I hardly did anything. Anyway, I will be away in the coming weeks for various reasons, and I’ll be back for the next hike in October, so the weather is definitely going to be a different one by then. See you there!