Lyrics “One Foot Before The Other” – Frank Turner, 2011
While thinking about how to start this post I encountered a rare (for me) non-native English speaker dilemma. My first impulse is to call the activity I’m planning to write about “hiking”. That’s the verb I learned in school. When I started to travel to the UK for vacations as an adult I’ve realized in the UK they like to call the same activity “walking”. Which felt and to be honest still feels a bit weird. I walk to the bus stop. Or the shops. If I put on heavy boots, carry a backpack and take my trekking poles, I’m not going for a walk, am I? I’m going on a hike!
I got interested in hiking as activity a few years ago, when I started to be more mindful about being active, working out, fitness and such. I trekked up Ben Lomond in 2017 for crying out loud.
I’ve never been consistent with any fitness / being active routine though and I admit working out / running / hiking have been an on-off activity for me over the years. I’ve slowly come to just accept that and not beat myself up for every time I’ve fallen off the wagon. But instead applaud myself for every time I get back on.
Every once in a while, I have considered a proper hiking holiday on one of the many long-distance routes here or in the UK, even though I’m drawing the line at carrying my clothes and all my stuff in a backpack. I’m too high-maintenance for that and luggage transfer is expensive.
I did sort of start with the London Capital Ring Walk (126 km), because getting to the start and end point of a chosen stage is doable by public transport.
“Started” in the way that I did a first stage in June 2022. But even though I haven’t done another one the several times I have been to London since, I still haven’t given up on the idea of completing it. Bit by bit over the next few years.
A similar idea got stuck in my mind quite a while ago. I doubt I’d ever consider hiking the actual “Camino de Santiago” (Way of St. James) – the legendary hiking pilgrimage through northern Spain – to the tomb of St James in Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela. But over the last decades all over Europe historical pilgrimage routes which feed into the Camino have been re-established, with digital maps, proper way markers and all. One of them – the Westphalian route of “Jakobsweg” (Way of St. James in German) is passing through my federal state. 200 km from Osnabrück to Cologne. All these re-established pilgrim hiking routes come with recommended stages to do in one go. This one is supposed to take 11 days with an average daily hiking distance of ~ 18 km.
I won’t be doing that. I plan to do it bit by bit. Hopefully more consistently than the Capital Ring Walk in London. But in a similar way that I plan to mostly use public transport to get to a starting point and back home from an end point. Last weekend I’ve mapped out the first half of the stages: which train station to start and end by and how long it will take me to get there.
Even when I say public transport most of the first few trips will include a bit of a drive to a bigger train station. Because that means I’ll only have to switch trains once and not twice and thus lessen the risk of missing a train or a connection because the first train is late or cancelled or something.
Part 01: Osnabrück – Natrup-Hagen (~ 17 km)
Saturday, 14 September 2024
Time spent on the actual ‘Way’: ~ 6h 20 min
Complete distance walked that day: ~ 21 km
Even though I’m in well enough physical shape to walk 15 – 20 km a day, I had no idea how this first day would go. No idea how quick or slow I would be. Spoiler alert: I was / am slower than the “average” walking time I found on various website about this walk. Which was bothering me for a moment until I realized that I don’t have to give fuck about average. I will do this my way. And if that’s slower than others, so what? Others probably won’t take as many photos as me either.
But as I had no idea how that first day would go, I wanted to be on the safe side and had planned an early start: Leave home around 5:30 to drive to the station, park the car, maybe grab something at the bakery, get on the train at 6:20 and be at the start of the path around 9:00.
In true and these days expected German public transport fashion the rail app informed me around 4:45 that the train I had planned to take was cancelled. The next one from that station would be an hour later, which would mean I’d get to start my hike an hour later
I checked alternatives from a different station in a bigger city and changed my plans, which included an additional 0.75 km from the car park to the station. But I knew that carpark, knew how to get there, what it would cost and couldn’t be bothered to look up alternatives.
The train rides as such went fine. I decided to wear a mask and was the only one doing so, but I’m so used to that after all these years. It was a lovely walk (another 1.5 km to add to my tally) along the river and through mostly empty city centre streets – it was early Saturday morning!
Until I arrived at St. Peter’s Cathedral, which can be considered the official starting point of this pilgrimage route.
I guess back in the day, pilgrims started the walk / pilgrimage with attending mass inside. I did not. From now on I’d be looking for the sign of the yellow scallop shell on blue background. (There was one earlier, closer to the cathedral, but the marker didn’t look as nice).
All in all, the trail was well marked, even though I sometimes was overly cautious and impatient and instead of trusting that I was on the right way checked the digital track on my map way too often.
The path leads through the old city centre…
…and from then on for quite a bit through the city. Residential areas, the occasional park, but all in all not so photo-worthy to be honest. That only changed about half way through, when the suburbs finally turned into a more rural scenery.
I had started a bit too brisk in the city, but then managed to get into a good pace. Not too fast and the walk wasn’t too strenuous. Even after the half-way point I was still considering to walk further than originally planned and get to the next alternative train stop. Yes I had that alternative planned out as well. I’m a plan-for-all-contingencies kind of person. Especially when it became clear that I would reach the planned for train stop in the long afternoon lull between departures and might have to wait there for about an hour.
But between km 12 – 14 I realized pushing on would be a stupid idea, because my feet were getting tired. I also knew there’d be another 0.75 km back to my car at the end of the day and also some steeper sections after my originally planned final stop for the day. I did not trust my tired feet anymore to manage those without stumbling or worse.
At km 16 I was very glad that I had given up the plan to push on.
In the end I only spent about 30 minutes waiting for the next train and the rides home went mostly fine. The 2nd train managed to accumulate a delay of 17 minutes on a 53-minute ride though As if the German rail gods (demons? gnomes? Whoever is in charge of this mess these days) wanted to bring the day full circle.
I did not really set out to do this as some kind of spiritual experience, though I did set out trying to be more mindful about what I was doing and most of all what I was thinking while I was on my way. Which might be a first step to a spiritual experience? I don’t know. I caught my mind quite often not being in the present moment, but rather ruminating about things past or daydreaming about stuff in the future. We all do that, I know. I sometimes feel / am afraid I do that more than is good for me. I don’t know. I’m working on it.
At least I managed to stay off all the socials / mails / anything digitally distracting – except WhatsApp – the whole day and even till this morning, so that’s a step in the right direction. Turns out: I did not really miss a thing. Go figure!
Now let’s plan when to go out next and what to pack that I had forgotten this first time: sunglasses, gloves, something to sit on…, that kind of things.
2 Comments