Hiking from Wuppertal Vohwinkel to Solingen Schaberg

This was the last weekend of this autumn, and I have to say it really feels like winter now. I even heard that in some areas of NRW there was also snow yesterday.

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As I already knew that the weather was not going to be particularly great, I decided to organize a rather simple hike, something I usually call “winter hike”, in which I simply enjoy being outside and not so much adventures. Other people keep looking for something more, but for me it’s enough.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on around me, but this time there were really not many people signing up in the first place, and then many of them simply cancelled in the last minute.

So when I arrived at Düsseldorf central, we were only three people. On the way more people joined, but in the end we were only 9 people (including the ones who came late or too early).

Wuppertal Vohwinkel is such a weird train station. It works like a regional hub and there are so many trains that stop there, but around the station there’s absolutely nothing interesting. Still, since the train station is so important, the area is somehow extremely large, and it took us so much time to get out of the city area.

But once outside the city area, there was this beautiful forest. The leaves are mostly gone by now, but I still find this forest kind of very beautiful.

I usually don’t really care about the size of the group, because larger groups simply split up in smaller ones, and you would end up walking in a small group anyway. But I have to say we talked really a lot today among the 9 people that joined. And as we were the same people all the time, I got the feeling that we knew each other really well today.

There were locations on the way where it was almost flooded with so much water. Today the weather was relatively ok but it’s true that it’s been almost a week now that it’s raining almost all the time. How could we avoid it.

We had a break at the Wupper where there was a café a restaurant and a café across the river. We had been there only in the summer, and the café was always open, and the restaurant was also usually almost overcrowded with bikers. Today, the café was closed and there was hardly anyone in the restaurant. So weird to see the difference.

We had a break at the river where there were benches and a small table. I had my gadget to make small fire and heated up the food that I had prepared yesterday. It’s now possible because I got this metallic lunch box that can be directly put on fire.

Some people went to the restaurant, but most of us simply stayed outside and had lunch. We also took our group photo there.

The paths started getting even muddier on the way after the break. I guess some people had totally wet feet at some point.

At the Müngsten bridge, we went to this famous café where we sometimes stop and have a cup of coffee. Even though in the last years it became less and less often to go somewhere at the end of the hike, today we all really felt like staying there for a moment. It was the dynamics of today’s group. Maybe the fact that there were less people really helped us come together.

It was totally dark when we went up to the train station. I was not so sure if we could make it, but in reality there was just enough light (moonlight?) to go through the way. This part is always kind of challenging. In addition to this, we also didn’t really know when the train was coming when we were in the café, because we were all offline, and it turned out that it was just enough time for us to reach the train. Some people had to run the last few hundred meters. We all made it. Great!

After we reached Düsseldorf, we even went to an Indian restaurant, and then to a bar in the old city, with a couple of more people who didn’t hike today. It became such a long day, but also a really great one.