Hiking from Rhöndorf to Königswinter

Summer is gone. See you next year.

After last week’s hike, directly from Monday, the entire week was gloomy. That’s essentially what it’s like after summer here in Germany. It never rains too much at once, but it never stops raining. This kind of season lasts something like until the end of the year.

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And according to the weather forecast, today was supposed to be the worst day of the week. But then somehow the forecast got better and better, even though it never stopped telling it would rain.

With this in mind, it was not so surprising that we saw significantly less people this morning, despite today’s hiking taking place in Königswinter, which lies in an extremely famous area called Siebengebirge for their mountains and castles.

Since Königswinter lies outside VRR, there was this common problem with the ticket. In order to avoid ending up having no ticket, I personally secured an NRW ticket for 5 people in advance, with no date written on it, so that if I don’t need it today, I can use it on a different occasion. Maybe it’s wise to have such an NRW ticket every time, because all you have to do is write a date on it to make it valid, which is quite powerful in emergency. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t take a train with no ticket intentionally, but since the process of finding a ticket is often quite complicated, it’s probably worth having a plan B all the time.

We were watching the strong rain from the train while going along the Rhine, but then when we left the train, it stopped entirely. What a perfect timing.

The uphill from Rhöndorf was significantly less strenuous than last time we went to Königswinter. But then it went up and up all the time. In contrast to the relatively cold weather, we gradually started sweating as we went ahead. As I was complaining last time, we were staying in a forest all the time, but since the weather wasn’t that good, it wasn’t that important to have an open view either.

There was this place called Löwenburg, where we had a break last year when we hiked there. Some people went up there, and others went further. The groups became of course smaller in this moment, but in general today the groups were more free-spirited, like we were walking in small groups separated from each other all the time. Well, I’m actually quite glad that we can now walk independently, rather than following the organizer, who actually often doesn’t know where to go. In this sense, it was a very comfortable hike today for me.

Again, despite the gloomy weather forecast, we could see the blue sky every now and then. I first thought I had to capture every single moment to appreciate the absence of rain, but at some point I realized that it was anyway not going to rain. Indeed, the weather stayed perfectly fine for the entire day. I don’t know how glad I was, given the fact that it would have been extremely messy in this area if the weather had been bad.

We had a break at Ölberg, which was the highest point of Siebengebirge. There was a restaurant there, and of course it was also possible to get there by car. I don’t understand how people can dare do such a tasteless thing. It was windy there, but the view over the hills from there was just amazing. It was also remarkable to see that famous places like Drachenfels or Löwenburg were visibly much lower than Ölberg, even though when we were there, we thought we had a great view.

Quite naturally, we had to walk down a hill after the break. It’s difficult to say what was easier, going up or down.

With a few random places, like view points or ruins, we had occasional breaks. I guess we also needed them, since the trail was not that easy.

Towards the end, we arrived at Petersberg, where we had a break when we hiked there two years ago. At that time, the café was working and there were a lot of people there. Today, it was windy, the café was closed and there was almost no one. Well, the view over the Rhine was just as good as last time.

It was getting darker and darker while going down the hill from Petersberg (of course, since summer is gone). We sort of had to hurry in order to catch a train, only to find out that we had left the slowest ones stranded, so that we had to wait actually even longer. Not to mention that we missed the train.

It was around 8pm when we came back to Düsseldorf, but today’s hike was a really good one. I’ll look forward to the next one around Siebengebirge.