One of many blessings I have for living in the city of Bergen is the number of hikes I get to go on. The city is called the City of Seven Mountains because it is surrounded by seven mountains. These however aren't the only mountains we have. We have many more and one of those is Landåsfjellet (fjell = mountain) and this one is also home to the geographical center of Bergen. We had to go check this place out!
Bergen & Hordaland TurlagWhat is a geographical center?
The definition of a geographical center is quite simple. It's the single geographical point where an uniform shape is balanced. Take your cellphone for instance. On the cellphones surface there exists a point where you can place the phone on the point of your finger and it will balance perfectly. That is the geographical center of your cellphone, or the gravitational center as it is often called.1
There are a number of ways to find this point but the easiest one is to average all of the longitude and all of the latitude points of a region. This method does however not take into account mountains and lakes and all of that jazz. It calculates is as though it was a flat area.2
Our Visit
This is one of many hikes in our city me and my girlfriend has never done. That means it was long overdue. There were quite a few geocaches to find along the way as well which gave us extra motivation.
The beginning of the trip isn't much to brag at and that's a shame really. Most of the ascent is done on tarmac and through neighborhoods. When we get to where a sign marks the hikes start we walk for about 30 minutes of a gravel road surrounded by cut trees and powerlines. Not even worthy of a picture.
Once we're past that though the fine views can finally start. When we get off the gravel road and onto the mountainous terrain we find ourselves at one end of Nubbevannet, a small lake. This marked the location of our fourth geocache for the day with the first three being grabbed on the way to the hike.
Sadly you can't see in any direction without seeing powerlines up here. It's a shame but the people needs that power. On the other side of the lake we can barely see Baunehytten (hytte = cabin). This would be our next stop after picking up this geocache.
Having already been walking for about two hours we were starting to feel that hunger so we decided that Baunehytten would be a good place for a small meal. We got first row seats overlooking the lake. Emma had made herself some sandwiches at home and I had bought myself a burrito at the store.
When our meal was finished it was time to find that geographical center. It wasn't far off from here at all. Just about a 300 meter walk to the north. We had the GPS coordinates to where it was so we used the map to navigate our way there.
When we arrived at the approximate area it wasn't hard to see where it was. It was marked by this wooden construction build and placed here by none other then my uncle @krishare (whom I don't think is active at all sadly).
The construction also holds a secret that I won't reveal in this post. Let's just say that my uncle placed this construction here for a reason and we wasn't just interested in it for being the geographical center of Bergen.
After the site had been visited, depicted and crossed off our list we started walking back to Baunehytten. We had picked out a trail leading down from the mountain that held two more geocaches that we wanted to get.
I don't regret that decision for a second as it gave us an awesome view of the city. You could see pretty much all of it from up here, even the surrounding islands. @nathen007 might take some interest in Brann Stadion, home grounds to SK Brann, which can be seen to the left in the below picture.
And that pretty much concludes this trip.
All images in this post (except one) are taken by me or my girlfriend who will be joining Hive soon! I finally managed to convince her.