As some who might have been following me and @emuse knows our favorite shared hobby is Geocaching. We started this hobby in June of 2020 (ish) and we're still actively doing it today. Although the frequency of our walks and hikes have decreased it's still a hobby we love.
A few days ago we returned to one of the first places we went Geocaching during the summer of 2020. A place called Smøråsfjellet. It's a lovely place but at the same time we're reluctant to go here due to the sheer amount of people we always meet here. This place has pretty much been tailormade to be a family retreat with a lot of benches and campsites to hang out for a day. We tried to counter this by going after the sun had started setting.
This worked out great. As we arrived several families were loading into their cars and leaving. We barely saw any people along the trail and the few we met were joggers rushing by.
We had eyes out around 10 potential Geocaches to find but we only ended up finding 3. We knew that some of them would most likely be out of reach due to the terrain rating being 4.5 or higher which usually means you'll need some kind of climbing gear or the like.
What we did not expect however was to be blocked by a viper. As we arrived at ground zero of the first Geocache we quickly spotted it up in a climbable tree. As @emuse was moving forwards to get it I heard her scream and jump back. Lo and behold there lays a viper in the grass. Just chillin' and getting his tan on. There was no alternate route to get to the tree and as we didn't want to step over him or disturb him we decided to postpone this cache until autumn when there's less vipers around. This is an area with quite a lot of viper activity.
The rest of the trip went by pretty smoothly. We walked what's called the Anniversary Trail or at least parts of it. This trail is around 55 kilometers long and stretches itself across all of Bergen. The trail was made in 2020 when Bergen had its 950th anniversary, hence the name, and its marked by small poles and benches with quotes from famous people from Bergen along the way.
We found three geocaches along the way, including one we didn't find when we were here in 2020. We were to green back then but with the experience we've built over these last few years we managed to find it with relative ease.
Another cool thing about this place is all the wooden chainsaw art statues standing around. They're mostly of animals while some are depicting classical Norwegian fairytale beings. You'll find these at steady intervals along the whole trail. These are really well made and they contribute a lot to the personality of this place.
Now that I'm on holidays and since we're spending the holidays at home this year we're gonna do more trips like these. We have several of them planned and we're ready to spontaneously head out whenever the weather is at our side.
I tried to arrange the photos several times without finding a composition I liked so I decided to just dump them below instead and let them tell their own story supported by mine. Enjoy!
Which statue is your favorite? For me it's the chicken for some reason. It just has a kind of mighty presence that makes me like it. I think it's in the eyes.
All images in this post taken by me.