Hiking from Letmathe to Nachrodt

As I was staying in Essen from yesterday to today, I wanted to organize a hike somewhere in the north. At the same time, at the beginning of summer I kind of promised there would be always a possibility to swim on Sundays. That’s actually a not very easy task, as there are already not so many hills in the north, and it’s extremely difficult to find a place with clean water. I still somehow managed to organize one from Letmathe to Nachrodt, where we actually already had a break some weeks ago.

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It looks like summer is already over this year. To be honest I was not even sure if it was a good idea to offer a possibility to swim in the first place.

And so there were very few people joining today. With all the people together, we were only 10. On the other hand, Soumil was telling me that it was nice to be able to talk to everyone.

There’s something we found out today: The RE train that we took from Dortmund to Letmathe is actually an IC train which runs as an RE train for a certain section. So we could enjoy the IC comfort from Dortmund Hbf, even though it also stopped in the middle of nowhere for around 30 min for no reason.

We had to walk along the main road for some time, as you can see on the map above. That was pretty much the only part where it was not particularly beautiful today.

For the rest of the day, we were walking through the forest of the Sauerland. The Sauerland itself is a region that was badly affected by the drought of a few years ago, but this area was actually fairly ok. This being said, compared to the Eifel still it’s not the most beautiful area, and there were still some dead trees along the way.

Till the break, there were some ups and downs, exactly a good amount that makes you feel you are having a nice hike. There were also a few wild places where we had to struggle a little bit.

Apparently now it’s the high season for berries. There were so many of them along the way that at some point I really could not look at them anymore.

As I already stated above, we had a break at Nachrodt, at the same site where we swam a few weeks ago. At that time, we saw a better place for a break from above, and this time we went there. It was indeed a lot better than the last time. Today since the weather was not particularly good, I didn’t even bring my swimming stuff. Instead, I simply slept on the chair there. It was a really nice sleep, while some people actually even went to the water.

Just like the last time, we went up this super steep hill right next to the break. Since I had a very deep sleep, I needed some time to restart. Anyway we all managed it to the top.

There was a Japanese restaurant on the way, called Yami. It means darkness in Japanese. I’m wondering whether the owner knew what it means.

We reached the train station right before the train arrived, so we could not find time to have an ice cream. Besides the IC that we took got a delay. Good job DB. At least we could take the same IC, and this one was very comfortable. Good job DB :).