Hiking from Wuppertal Zoologischer Garten to Solingen Schaberg

For a very long time, this group did not have other organizers than me. So on the one hand it was difficult to promise a hike every Sunday, on the other hand it was also super easy to decide where to go. Now the organizer group consists of 5 people, and while we are exemplarily respectful towards each other, it is not like we all have the same preferences. This week, it took us at least a few days to agree on a track, proposed by Rahul.

For one thing I was very happy: Our train was leaving at 10:30am. So I had a very relaxed morning, could even work for one hour or so. Then at some point I went to the train station to join the group. Frankly, I think it should always be like this in the winter.

These days the temperature is going through a rollercoaster. It was pretty cold again, but the weather was brilliant. Somehow we are super lucky with the weather this winter. Well maybe I shouldn’t jinx it though…

We have been to Wuppertal quite a few times before. Every time it’s more or less the same: As soon as you get out of the train station, you have to climb up a long hill, because Wuppertal lies in the valley formed by the river Wupper. So the nature is super close to the train station, but you have to confront an immediate uphill.

Today, we had more or less the same number of people as last time. Rahul and Davy have this strong tendency to wait for the others, so that the group stuck together today. Since I was usually the one walking behind, I could say I was the one who profited from it the most.

This is the area where I created my first trail, which I didn’t download from the internet. It was a huge discovery for me, that you don’t need to know much about the area to make a trail. Ever since, I usually make trails on my own, but I was also a little bit lucky, because it’s such a beautiful area here. With this massive forest, there’s the Wupper running along, so that you can vary the difficulty. After 8 years, I still love it.

Coming back to waiting, we even waited for the ones who took a later train somewhere on the way. We called it a tea break. If I was the organizer I would have not done it, but yeah every organizer with their own taste. And in the end it was probably a good thing that we waited.

There was this narrow gauge railway, which at first totally confused me, but then I remembered that there’s a super short railway line which I think is now used mostly in the summer (if ever) for small kids. I had seen it multiple times on the map, and always wondered what it looks like. Today, finally we came across it, and just as weird as it looked on the map, it looked like it didn’t really belong there. But that’s the funny thing about these narrow gauge railways, as they appear in unexpected places.

There was one section which bikers told us not to cross. That’s because it was a BMX track, and if a mountain bike comes in the opposite direction there’s no way to avoid an accident. And indeed when we started climbing up, there happened to be no bike, but then when we went down, a few bikers passed by, and I have to say we wouldn’t have been able to avoid an accident.

So here comes the highlight of the day: break. The reason is super simple, it’s because Patrick had sent me a video about outdoor cooking equipment, and I always had this solid fuel, but the video was about this carbon fiber for ethanol. I bought it almost immediately and tested it at home, and it was super powerful. Besides, ethanol is only a bit more expensive than electricity, which means it’s a fraction of the cost of solid fuel. That’s really a game changer. Since the carbon fiber is only a size of around a cigarette box with 11 g, it was also super easy to carry around.

Patrick on the other hand had brought his gas burner, the heavy one, which I would have never taken to a hike. Well, he did it because he wanted to have a comparison. I heated up my pasta from yesterday, because I didn’t want to make something super complicated, and then made coffee and tea. He just made coffee. It’s true that the gas burner is **somewhat** more powerful, but it’s not like you cannot compete with the carbon fiber. In the end we both agreed that this carbon fiber was a much better solution. I guess I’m gonna simply carry it around in the next hikes, even if I cannot make sense of it, just because it weighs like nothing and it can bring us warm coffee and tea.

The whole action became kind of like an entertainment for everyone. Since now I know that this works in principle, I’m probably going to offer tea to everyone who brings a mug from the next hikes on.

We walked then mostly along the Wupper after the break. It’s relatively flat there, but it was not like it was totally flat. Besides every now and then we also went away from the Wupper. It was a well made track.

Our tradition is to go to the metal box café after the hike, but today, as one train got cancelled, we decided to go to Solingen, also because the sunset was getting close (although that wouldn’t have been a problem). We then had an ice cream in Solingen, and had dinner in Düsseldorf. Frankly, starting at 10:30am fitted into this schedule perfectly. Good job!