Weekend hiking trip to Sorpesee!

It was 2019 that we organized a camping trip last time. It was somewhere close to the Dutch border. After that, I thought I wouldn’t organize another weekend trip, because compared to normal weekend trips, things are a lot more complicated there. This time, Rohith persuaded me to organize one, and with a lot less people I decided to give it another try.

There are quite a few things that changed from last time: First of all, there are not so many people anymore in the hiking group. That’s probably because there are simply a lot more hiking groups inside NRW than when I started organising events. So the announcement on my website went somewhat unnoticed for many people. Then this time the main transport was car: both Rohith and Amalia recently got a car, which allowed us to have far better equipment.

The campsite we chose was at Sorpesee, which is one of those beautiful lakes in the Sauerland. It took Rohith and me quite some time to find a campsite in the first place, because these days most of the campsites don’t want a group of people. In this one at the Sorpesee we could do the reservation online. There was no possibility of cancellation, but we were super confident that it was going to be successful – until the weekend started appearing in the weather forecast. Frankly I don’t understand what’s going on, but right now it really looks like the summer is already over. In every weather forecast there was only gloom information. Some people started suggesting to postpone it, but since it was anyway not possible to cancel, and since I was myself interested in the experience of camping in the rain, so we did it anyway.

My preparation mainly focused on the rain and comfort in the tent. I have this one small tent that I have been using since my bicycle trip to Japan, which is in principle for 2 people. For those who don’t have much experience: a 2-person tent is a tent, in which 2 people fit. It is a lot smaller than the double size bed, and so you would be very uncomfortable to share it with someone you wouldn’t know well. In my case, since I was sharing it with Amalia, it didn’t pose a huge problem for me. But then, I bought a new mattress from Decathlon, a kind of mattress which requires a pump, which I would have never bought if we didn’t have a car. Then I also bought a large tarp to make sure that there’d be a community area when it rains in the evening. In addition to this, we also got a new blanket, and new pillows. The preparation looked quite detailed. I also thought about buying a new tent, but I decided not to, because buying a tent requires precise knowledge of what you exactly need.

Here’s the plan for the Friday evening: I would go to the campsite by train and bicycle, because someone had to be there before 6pm. The others were coming by car.

When I arrived at Neheim, there was this beautiful blue sky around me, which gave me the impression that it was going to be a great weekend. And the ride from there to the campsite was also delightful. The lake itself looked really beautiful. At the same time, I could easily see that it’s an area for rather well-off people.

At the campsite, however, things started going rather downwards. Firstly, I learned that it was forbidden to grill. Then I found out that the camp field was somewhat far away from the toilet and shower area, and the toilet was not particularly clean. Well, ok it was not that bad anyway.

At least we were right next to the water. It was quite cold, but otherwise whenever we wanted we could always go there.

Then Amalia and Soumil arrived, and we started setting up our tents. We also set up our tarp, at which moment it actually started raining. It immediately started serving as a refuge. Well, there was a bit of stress in that moment regarding the state of my tent and its size.

Some time later Rohith’s car arrived with all the rest of the people. Since Rohith and Anita had their gas burners, we could still make ramen, which was planned for the first night. Rohith was also preparing some curry at the same time. It was a really good idea to make ramen, because we didn’t need to properly organize the ingredients, but instead people could simply bring whatever they wanted.

Probably because of the weather, there were not so many tents at the campsite. We stayed up until midnight. We were not quite the last ones to stay awake, but the whole place was very quiet.

Day II (August 5, Saturday)

We first woke up with the kids running around. Then there were some random neighbors shouting at each other. Ok this campsite is not quite empty, and apparently it’s also not required to be quiet here.

In my original plan, we would have bought the breakfast from the campsite. As it turned out, it was either this super expensive buffet of around 20€ or just some bread (with nothing additional). I was very happy when I learned that Anita had brought some waffles for all of us.

Prior to the event, we were talking about doing stand up paddle (SUP) today. However, the temperature was reaching merely 20 degrees. So we decided to hike instead, also because I already had a trail. We started walking around 10am. It’s kind of late for a weekend trip

This area is very much like the rest of the Sauerland; the trees are somewhat not so green, and there were quite some dead areas along the way. But today we also got a few places where we had a great view.

Besides there were again a lot of berries along the way. Rahul had taken a plastic bag to collect them. We ate some of them, but most of them remained and were transformed into jam after the weekend.

We were sometimes on the hills, sometimes at the lake. Whenever we were at the lake, I could see that it would be perfect for cycling, because not only it was totally flat, but also the cycling lane was relatively well established. Or maybe we can also try to organize a roller skating session, because Soumil and I recently started doing that.

This lake is really beautiful. In this beautiful weather, it was beautiful from far away, and also nearby, as the water was very clear.

There was an ice cream van on the way. I didn’t get one, because the hike was not yet over!

Right after the ice cream van, there was a little unknown path. According to Komoot it was existing, but it’s not quite a hiking path which you’d consider as one.

There was no place along the way where we could have had a proper break (except for random benches etc.), so we went all the way to Langscheid, which was not so far away anymore from the ending point. We then went to a Greek restaurant.

After the Greek restaurant we tried to do SUP, but it was kind of too late for the rental. So we simply went back to the campsite.

At the campsite, Rohith et al. were talking about going for shopping. I suggested to swim as long as the weather was ok, because we arrived around 6pm and the rain was forecast for 7pm. They went nevertheless. And it started raining almost immediately.

Soumil, Amalia and I were staying in the community area, which was almost falling apart all the time. We went through a really hard time while the others were going shopping, because it was nice to watch the rain from the community area which was spared of rain.

At some point Amalia and I decided to go to the water. In that moment the rain was getting really hard, and somehow it was somewhat warmer inside the water. So it kind of became difficult to leave the water.

When the others came back, it was still raining, but it was a little bit better. Rohith started frying cheese. It was in principle forbidden to grill, but still I put fire on my wood, because it was so wet everywhere that there was simply no danger at all. With this fire, we made the last ramen, and grilled some corn. Then we stayed up for some time with a lot of alcohol we had also a lot of fun.

Day III (August 6, Sunday)

Today, we woke up also fairly early in the morning. We prepared first some breakfast which Rohith and others had bought yesterday, and we swam in the lake. In this moment, we were being really slow, but we found out that rain was forecast in an hour or so, so we started quickly packing the stuff.

The rain started a little bit earlier, and our stuff got quite wet before we could put everything in the car. Maybe we should have considered this part a bit more seriously when we started packing.

Since the weather was going to be bad for the rest of the day, we went to a nearby bouldering center, but as a matter of fact, we simply didn’t have energy anymore to do anything meaningful, so we just went to the neighboring Chinese restaurant, which was essentially the last piece of our this weekend’s trip.

So much for this weekend trip. And as I had feared at the beginning, it turned out to be a fairly complicated one, with a lot of lessons to learn.

One thing that makes this trip unique is the fact that we had two cars at disposal all the time. It allowed us to transport anything we wanted. Based on this, I bought items that I would not have taken otherwise – chairs, tarp, picnic blanket, table etc. Among these items, especially the chairs and the tarp far exceeded our expectations. As a matter of fact, without the tarp, which served as our community area, things there was no way for us to spend the evenings together. On this point, however, I think we can have a bit of improvement. In particular, we might have been able to organize one family tent, which contains a sleeping area and a community area. Usually such a family tent has enough space for a group like us, but then since the area is usually somewhat closed, we would have been able to make use of the whole space.

There’s one thing that I should have thought of – plastic bags. It is extremely important to be able to have many of them, because you never know what kind of dirty stuff you might have to transport, and especially for the garbage that has to be meticulously collected. Fortunately Bahare thought about it, so we didn’t have a problem in the end.

It might also have been useful to synchronise a bit better what to take as well. Apparently for Bahare, who comes from Iran, it is not usual that the campsite does not provide sleeping pads etc. I had a list of items on my page, but I could have advertise it a bit better.

I think I have never really properly checked whether it is ok to grill at campsites. This time I asked and they said no. I don’t really know what kind of event it is if we cannot grill at the campsite. That’s definitely something we have to check up beforehand.

For the price I think it was quite ok that it was around 100€ per person (excluding the lunch) for the three days including the campsite. My Telegram bot worked also perfectly for all cases.

In total, my fear that it could be too complicated to organize was partially true, and if we organize it again (which is going to happen in October), we need a much better planning of the program, and what to take. I guess I will have some discussions with Rohith in the coming weeks about it, who also helped me a lot in the organisation this time.