Hiking from Untermaubach to Hausen

I have talked about it for a few weeks now, but we got a new organizer, who used to organize hikes in the Cologne hiking group. As I have already said a few times before, the admin of that group, who doesn’t necessarily organize hikes, started collecting donations so along with a lot of people this guy moved to our group. On the way to the hike today, someone also showed me their FB page, and even though it is explicitly forbidden to make advertisements, this admin is making a lot of advertisements. The whole story is becoming more and more like a joke.

There was also a bit of confusions concerning today’s event, as there were inconsistencies in the description. The problem happens often when you make an event description manually, because you have to pay attention to whether the train stations were chosen correctly, or the timing, and the event description must be consistent with all this information. It’s not so much work, but extremely error-prone. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen very often anymore with me, as most of the procedure is now automatic. Currently the algorithm runs only for me, but I’m now working on a telegram bot that would allow other people to use it.

Today’s hike was again in the Eifel, towards the Rur. There is only one line that connects Düren and the Rur, and as always we had 40 min to change trains there. I don’t really mind this long stay at Düren, because there’s a DB café there, where we can all sit just like this. It’s a self-service place and even though it says you have to order at least 2,50€ to sit there, in practice no one really cares about it. I buy at least a cup of coffee there, so I always fulfill the condition.

It was yet again a a fairly large group today. Unfortunately, we were together only at the beginning of the hike, as we were walking with a totally different rhythm today.

We have been to this area a few years ago, long before corona. The weather was extremely bad at that time, but I remember that it was beautiful. We could see part of it today. The beginning of the hike was relatively flat, but with changing views around us.

We also got a beautiful weather today. It was finally like summer today. It was actually so hot that I started regretting not have brought my swimming stuff with me, as we were walking along the Rur today, which is one of few clean rivers around this area.

As we were walking up a hill, we could see that the landscape around us was getting better and better. At some point we reached the top of the hill, where there were some rocks, from which we could have a brilliant view around this area.

It was only a quarter of the hike today, but many of us still had lunch there. The photos we took there became the de facto group photo, even though there were so many people missing.

We stayed at the same height for some time. It was a nice forestal area all the time. I was expecting some berries around this time of the year, but I couldn’t really find any there.

There were some small constructions along the way, where we could have some breaks as well. There were also a lot of people along the way today. That was probably not only because it is a nice area for a hike, but also today we finally got a great day for a hike.

Around this time, the group was separated so far from each other, that I could talk to only a handful of people. One important reason was because Davy (our new organizer) was as always extremely fast, and people didn’t really know what to do. I don’t think that was a problem, but it was also a pity, because there were also a lot of people joining for the first time today.

We had a small break at Zerkall, which is a small train station, because there was free toilet and a nice area along the river to sit. I could also have a short nap, which appeared to me like the best thing to do on a day like this. There we had a chance to see many people again, although I guess I lot of people didn’t even stop there in the first place.

From there till the end, I only talked to Anita and Inna. There was simply no one else around us. We were also somehow extremely tired around there, so we didn’t talk much either XD. I was also mostly listening podcasts.

There were finally some berries there. They looked like they were still not quite ready yet, but some of them were pretty ok. Finally it’s the season again. Beautiful.

At Hausen we were together again, even though we heard they were actually waiting for us for more than one hour, instead of taking an earlier train. I don’t think we have ever experienced such a huge separation before. On the way back to Düsseldorf, I also got some feedback from the people saying we were just too far away from each other. Well, in general I don’t really mind it, but maybe it’s worth talking about it this time.

We watched the WC finale in Düsseldorf. A nice one between Spain and England, with Spain’s well earned victory. What a great day!