Hiking from Wetter to Herdecke

This was the autumn that made me realize that corona is now definitely over.

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The main reason why I’m saying this is because all the business trips came back to my life, which forced me to be out of Düsseldorf on Sundays. Well, there were also a few personal events on top of this. In the end, there was a huge transition from the last hike to today’s one: we were basically complaining about the fact that we couldn’t swim in the last one, while today we were nearly freezing today. In a way, however, I’m also glad that it’s getting somewhat cold, because it’s often too hot in the summer in the recent years in Europe.

Anyway, I felt really great to organize a hike for this weekend – it was like a huge achievement to post it on the website. So, I also looked forward to this hike. It was as if the weather was responding to my expectation, that the forecast got always better over the week, and in the end it was a clear blue sky. I was also glad that I prepared such a nice hike for today.

Well, compared to this, there were not so many people joining today. I guess we were around 20 people. Maybe we somewhat lost the rhythm in the meantime as I was not joining. This being said, it’s still a decent number, with a lot of old faces appearing.

Witten and Wetter are I would say the two stations which cover a beautiful area north of the Ruhr. From here towards Herdecke is a huge hill that allows you to have a great view over the area between the Wupper and the Ruhr. It’s really a pity that there are only few train stations here.

Just as always, there was a bit of drama this morning. While we had 17 min to change trains, our first train got a 19 min delay. I didn’t think we would make it, but then it turned out we could change also in Bochum (instead of Essen), which made it possible for us to take the original connection, mainly because the connecting train had to wait for ours.

From Wetter, we walked up the usual hill to reach the plateau. Much of the day today we could have a great view over the Ruhr. It was a pity that there were electric wires very often, making it more difficult to have a good photo.

The trees have got a beautiful color in the meantime. They don’t become red like in Japan, but at least they get this beautiful yellow before the winter comes. I’m glad to have seen it this year in such a great weather.

Because of this week’s weather, the ground was somewhat muddy. At some points it was also not easy to to cross, but there was nothing too complicated. Solid footpath on a somewhat bad day, I’d say.

I was planning to have a break in Herdecke, but we stopped right before, because we had a good view over the Rhine. Today, I just had nuts (and not even a backpack). We took then a group photo with my new iPhone 15 Pro Max. I hope you see a difference.

There was a long section along the Rhine as well. Since the weather was good, I was afraid of a flux of E-bikers, but fortunately the streets were large enough to avoid it. There were a lot of people on the way.

From some point the group was so far separated. I had a long conversation with two Persian ladies. I could finally speak Farsi again. Nice!

There was a tower near Wetter. I didn’t include it intentionally, but we could have had a nice picture there as well.

We hurried towards the end a little bit, because I wanted to go back to Düsseldorf as early as possible, as my flatmate was having her birthday party. There was anyway not much to see anymore. Anyway, it was really great to have such a hike again after a long time. I’m gonna look forward to the next ones with as much excitement!