Hiking from Schaberg to Leichlingen

Summer is over. This year, it was an extremely dry one. Maybe the weather is now taking revenge on the weather, as it’s now raining like everyday. The horrible thing is, today was probably the worst day. It started raining in the morning and it rained almost the whole day.

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The horrible thing is, I chose a relatively long trail for today. So we were essentially walking in the rain for a very long distance. What was I thinking.

This morning, there were quite a number of people at Düsseldorf central. This was the first regular weekend trip after the end of the 9-euro ticket. I was at the platform, and couldn’t believe how empty it became all of a sudden. I appreciated the 9-euro ticket, but at the same time I’m also glad that it went to an end. And indeed it was really easy to find a place to sit on the train. Hopefully it is going to be considered in the next ticket, which is apparently going to be introduced at the beginning of the next year.

As I didn’t feel the pressure to take advantage of the 9-euro ticket anymore, we were hiking very close to Düsseldorf this time. Since Deutsche Bahn cancelled our train from Solingen to Schaberg, it took extra time to get there for us, but still we arrived there in one hour, with a coffee break in between. I can hardly complain about that.

It was actually not raining when we arrived in Schaberg. As always, we took a quick look at the highest railway bridge in Germany. There’s usually some construction work going on, but today it was not the case.

Today, we were essentially going along the river Wupper. Just like along the Ruhr, it is somewhat hilly along the Wupper, but it doesn’t mean that it was really complicated. The main problem was the rain, as it made the surface really slippery today. I had relatively good shoes today, but if you appear in sneakers or so, which was the case for some people, you should be ready to suffer along this path.

Almost at the beginning, there was this place with a restaurant. I was actually thinking there’d be only one restaurant along the way, so I thought this was the place. It took me a very long time for me to realise that it wasn’t, and when I realized it, we were already anyway about to leave.

Then the real rain started and it really never stopped throughout the day. I’m really glad that it didn’t happen last week.

But I have to say I’m also glad that it started raining again here, because it was clearly too dry in this summer. Rather than seeing the yellow parks in Düsseldorf, I would rather walk in the raining in this beautiful forest right next to Düsseldorf. Well, the best would be to walk in the beautiful forest when it’s not raining, but this is Germany, and the summer is over. What can I expect.

Then there was a small surprise right before the restaurant where I first planned to have a break: the bridge over the Wupper was gone. There was literally no explanation for this. There were just some signed that must have been used for the sign on the road, but there was no indication of when it is going to be available again etc. I was just really glad that we had a break in this small restaurant at the beginning, as we could at least have some rest there.

I presume some people wanted to finish as soon as possible, as the group was torn apart in the second half of the hike. Some people were completely stuck in the back of the group. Apparently they also gave up at some point.

There was a small city festival in the city of Leichlingen. I was just so glad that we all made it there. I got ice cream and we all went back home. We were really freezing while waiting for the train at the platform. God the winter is here again.