Hiking from Hohenlimburg to Altena!

Recently, we had this hike around Lennep, which is just one station after the end of the VRR area, which had forced us to buy a ticket, just for one station. On the eastern edge of the VRR, I had a similar problem: Altena. This is one of the most beautiful cities in the Sauerland, if not the most beautiful, but lies right after the end of the VRR, so we haven’t been there very often. With the introduction of the Deutschlandticket, we can now go there for free, and especially for me it’s interesting because I also don’t need to be dependent on other people.

Download kml / gpx

The track that I organized today was more than 20 km. This was essentially because it was a long weekend again. I didn’t properly announce it, but it’s sort of an “expert hike” as I called it a few years ago.

For inexplicable reasons I was super grumpy this morning. Somehow I didn’t want to talk to anyone, but this changed real quick, when there was this guy Jiten, who joined for the first time, approached me and started talking about his trip along the Camino de Santiago. I didn’t ask anything, he just started talking. And those who know me well might already know well that I love people who talk about themselves, much more than those who just ask questions. Anyway it was a huge mood changer for me and for the rest of the day I also enjoyed being with other people.

Hohenlimburg is definitely not a big city, but somehow it took quite some time to leave it. But then there was this massive forest, which was there pretty much all the time today.

There were also some fields on the way. Here there was this castle & restaurant.

Today, I was again carrying my Apple Watch and my headset, which allowed me to do the navigation using Komoot. At the same time, I was also listening to podcasts every now and then. So there was a great mixture of socialisation of enjoying my own time today. Again, if I appeared repulsive, I’m sorry. At least after the initial period I also enjoyed talking with everyone.

As you can see on the map above, the trail was fairly long today, but in reality it didn’t appear so long. We had done a good distance by the time we reached the break. A highlight of this season is swimming – in every hike we will (hopefully) have a possibility to swim. And this time it was just great. At the beginning there was only me swimming, but people started joining me one after another. In the end it looked like we were all in the river.

To be honest the water was not that great, but on such a hot day there was really nothing better than that. Some of the people even started learning swimming. 😀

Since I was swimming, I had only my swimming pants on. There’s something a bit special about my body, namely ever since I was a teenager, I’ve always had a six pack. In some years it’s a bit less visible and in other years it’s well defined. Anyway, while I don’t have a particular feeling about it, I keep getting comments about it. Today, there was one guy who asked me if I do something special. I said no (I mean, I go jogging, but I don’t do anything special?). For some reason, he was super impressed and started doing some core training. Maybe I should start a school or something XD.

It became a fairly long break. I even had a short nap. After that, as always, we had to climb up a fairly steep hill. From the top of the hill, we could see the place well where we had a break.

Somehow the group got apart in the second half. So most of the time I was listening to some podcasts. We were again going through a rather well maintained forest. To be honest I was a little bit surprised, because this is in the Sauerland, and elsewhere in the Sauerland you can find a lot more barren places.

There was a festival in Altena, but after 20km of hike, quite visibly many people were too tired. Since we had just missed a train, some of us went to the city center to have ice cream. This small city was just hopelessly overcrowded. But yeah it’s really totally summer now. Such a great feeling!