Hiking from Overath to Honrath

When I was jogging day before yesterday in Düsseldorf, I had to go through a sand storm – it was so dry until day before yesterday. We saw an important transition yesterday, and today, it rained. I can’t remember when it rained the last time, but at least such a long time ago, that I was actually glad to hear the noise this morning despite today’s hike.

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In contrast to the VRR area, in which every single hike that we do is a new one that I create myself, there are still a plenty of hiking trails in VRS. Today’s one, even though I can’t remember how it exactly came about, followed what’s called the Bergischer Weg. I’ve seen the tag before, but maybe it was the first time that we followed it so intensively like today.

Not so surprisingly, there were only 10 people joining today, which is actually great regarding the fact that if we are 10 people, there’s no question of corona rules (for those who don’t know the rules: no restrictions up to 10 people, no restrictions during sports activities up to 30 people, otherwise social distancing during sports activities and probably the lunch break is a grey zone since it’s part of the hiking event but it’s not part of the sport).

When we went to Engelskirchen, we could see that it was hilly right from the beginning. Today, even though the area was not very different, it stayed relatively flat.

In terms of nature, to me it was much better than in Sauerland or East of Bergisches Land. It’s much greener and the trees are somehow “more beautiful”. There were some barren spots as well, but apparently the area was less affected by the dry summers of 2018 and 2019.

Even though there was a good amount of rain, the ground was fairly solid today. But the temperature drop from day before yesterday brought such a change that I didn’t even sweat in my thick rain jacket. I really liked it today, after having hiked in the heatwave several times this year.

There was a restaurant on the way and I thought some people would have lunch there, but as it turned out we all stayed outside and had a super quick lunch.

Towards the end of the trail we had a bit of up and down, but it was still markedly less than what we’d usually have in Bergisches Land. At least it was not entirely flat today, so I guess it was pretty okay. Besides, it was almost like a winter weather, so having a near winter hike was probably appropriate.

There was nothing around the train station of Honrath. Fortunately there were enough trains and when we got there there was one about to arrive, so we directly took a train back to Cologne. It was not even 5pm when we arrived there.