Hiking from Hagen to Wetter

There are essentially two main lines that go from east to west in the Ruhr area – the one connects Duisburg and Dortmund, and the other one connects Düsseldorf and Hagen. As the distance between the two is not very short, there are not so many areas that we covered in between. Apparently some time in the past, I made two trails there, which were both only partly interesting. So I decided to make one interesting one by merging them. By doing so, I got confused and wrote a wrong starting point. After I posted it in the internet, Julian fortunately realized it and informed me of my mistake. In principle, we would have had to go one station more, but then I realized that our beloved German Railway cancelled our train altogether, so I had to make a total modification and set the starting station to Hagen. Why, German railway, why!?

Download kml / gpx

Anyway, actually it made the stuff kind of easier for a lot of people, because Hagen is a big station and there are more trains that people could get.

We first walked along the railway line to quit the city of Hagen. Hagen is a kind of a city where everything happens on one side of the train station and there’s just nature on the other side. It would be so much nicer if it was possible to get out to the other side directly from the train station. Especially the city side is simply not beautiful.

As soon as we crossed the railway, things were much more relaxed. And a few steps more and we were in the nature. It’s been weeks that we don’t have rain on weekends. On weeks days, on the other hand, it rains fairly often these days. What a luck. Anyway, for this reason the ground was very wet. Some people who joined for the first time suffered quite a deal.

I had never realized it before, but actually there have been a few sessions in January, where there were a very large number of people. That was apparently because people try to work out more often as their new year’s resolution. Today was good example for this. For a winter session, there was quite an impressive number of people.

Right after we entered the forest, there was a strong uphill. We’ve had this path some time ago. It’s actually not part of an existing hiking trail, but it’s actually nicer than the other pre-defined paths, and it also nicely announced the beginning of today’s hike. And appropriately enough, this part filtered those first timers who weren’t well prepared.

As there were not so many people who downloaded the map (the URL also changed due to the change of plan), I mostly led the group at the beginning. Later, it was taken over by Hilal and Rohith. So comfortable to just have to follow other people.

Today’s trail was merely 14km. It’s a good distance for a winter hike, but considering the long distances covered in Hagen, Vorhalle and Wetter it felt very short. I was thinking about having a break in Vorhalle, but people preferred to be on top of the mountain right behind Vorhalle, so we all went there. It looked like no one cared about bathroom. Is it actually not even important?

Oh, maybe it’s worth mentioning that it was yet another relatively warm weekend, which was partly the reason why there were so many people joining today. Anyway, there were some cyclists towards the end when we were walking along the Ruhr.

The group was far apart when we arrived in Wetter. I wonder what the new people thought about that XD. There was an ice cream parlor at Wetter right in front of the train station, so it became a perfect day for me in the end. Yay!!