Hiking at Witten!

Just as quite often, we were expecting 60% of rain until yesterday, which turned out to be completely wrong. When we got out of the train (for which we had more tickets than enough), we saw a clear blue sky, with sparsely distributed clouds. Bit cold, but perfect weather.

The perfect weather was maybe a bit overshadowed by the fact that the first bridge over the Ruhr was closed. Renovation work. Here in Germany, probably just as everywhere in the world, they love to do useless construction works. The problem here is the length; there is for example a construction work going on right next to our apartment, which has been being dug for weeks now, even though it looks pretty much the same every day. Well, they’ve been working on the airport of Berlin for decades now, which no one believes is going to finish in the near future.

We took the main bridge at Witten then, which wasn’t very far away. In the meantime, there was Fabio telling me there was a ferry nearby, which I ended up ignoring, mainly because I could not find the spot on the map. Later, after we crossed the bridge and passed the bridge that we were originally planning to cross, I saw the ferry. Pity that we didn’t take that one.

Right where this ferry was, there was a ruin of a castle. And nearby, there were a few caves on the way that were apparently used during the war or in the post-war period. Every now and then we have this kind of surprise while hiking. I guess no one would have been there if we hadn’t gone hiking today, as there is really nothing around Witten, although it is a lovely region. So nice to discover such a surprise in an unknown place.

Yet it turned out to be a problem, as some of the people simply got stuck at the site (no idea why they stayed there), while the rest of the group went further. We had a break in front of a restaurant. We arrived at different times. We oriented ourselves according to those who arrived late, and again, we had an extremely extended break. I guess next time we have to set the length of the break when we have a break.

Right after the break, we entered a tiny little path, which did not even look like a path. Later, I found out that this was not even a hiking path. Anyway, we were getting excited to see this small adventure going through an untouched forest. It continued at least for half an hour and the path joined a normal hiking path. It was an exciting moment that doesn’t arrive very often when we walk in this area.

Even though the trail was made longer due to the bridge problem at the beginning, we could make a short-cut right before the break, and the rest of the trail was simply so nice that we were not that tired in the end. However, there were apparently quite some people who got lost on the way. I don’t really understand why this keeps happening in the era of mobile internet. Anyway, we ended the day in the city center of Witten, with a fine ice cream parlour. And just as always, it was hopelessly overcrowded with all of us. Some famous tastes, like stracciatelle, finished after our passage. I’m sorry to the people standing behind us who had to live with the small choice we left behind 😀