Hiking report

Hiking from Blankenberg to Hennef

If you’ve been following my blog for some time or if you live in Germany, you certainly know already this cancer of the German society called German railway. Yet for some time now I had the impression that it was working much better than before these days. As it turned out, I was totally wrong. Today, we had a hike from Blankenberg to Hennef, and as my flatmate Giampaolo was going with me, I decided to take the best connection from Düsseldorf instead of going to Cologne earlier, hoping that the change at Cologne would work out anyway. We got a significant delay on the first train and of course missed the connection. God bless German railway.

And as I had initially announced a connection from Cologne, those who took a train from Cologne were unaffected and arrived earlier than I did. They started to hike nevertheless, which is now so smoothly done that I don’t need to explain anything in the WhatsApp group.

Today’s trail strictly followed the second section of the Siegsteig, a long hiking trail that goes from Siegen to Siegburg, following the river Sieg. The farther you go to the East (i.e. towards Siegen), the hillier it gets. Today’s one was the second from Siegburg, meaning relatively flat (but still much hillier than many places in NRW), and to be honest it was not the most attractive area to hike. I organised it today nevertheless regarding the fact that there wouldn’t be many people joining because of corona.

This being said, Bergisches Land is certainly an interesting place to visit. From the beginning to the end we could have a mixture of fields and forests everywhere. Besides, there was a long upward hill towards the beginning, a sort of challenge we don’t necessarily see everywhere.

While we were going up this hill, it started to pour, quite badly. This was a bit atypical for Germany, since when it rains here, it might rain long but only a little bit. It was raining partly so hard that it became difficult to talk and understand. In addition, we took a wrong path and were going in a field, with no protection from trees. Good job.

Because of the rain, we were often going through puddles. Fortunately, I took sandals today, so I really could simply go through them. We were also lucky that the temperature also stayed so high. Well, moist and warm, not a very good combination though.

I could see that this area also suffered from the dryness of the recent years. There were many barren areas along the way. So far it’s been raining a lot this year, so I’m gonna hope that it’s gonna look better in the coming years.

Just like last week, we didn’t have a proper place for a break. I simply stopped at some point with Meysam and made sure that everyone else continued. Apparently most of the people simply went directly to Hennef, our destination.

The weather got better towards the end of the hike. The trail became also fairly flat. It was more like just a walk than a hike, in a strong contrast to the beginning. Most of the people reached Hennef something like 20 min earlier than me and had ice creams. I made it right in time for an ice cream and the train.

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