Elephant Paths - Bergen, Norway 1.

A lady in her sixties walks this path to her cottage in the mountain. She usually doesn’t take this path, because there is one path downhill. Now she came to the top of the Ulriken mountain by the cablecar, so she walks this path. When she takes the cable car, the trip to her cottage takes 45 minutes. If she walks the downhill path, the trip takes one hour. She can also walk to her cottage from her home located on the other side of the mountains, but then the walk takes the whole day. She tells, that she knows the paths around Ulriken mountain very well, there are only few paths that she hasn’t walked through. She is very angry about the bicyclists on the mountain. It is allowed to ride bikes on Ulriken, but she thinks bicyckling seriously harms the sensitive flora and fauna of the mountain. What makes her laugh, is that the number of sheep is reduced. The sheep have been there as long as she has had her cottage on the mountain. But suddenly it was said by the officials, that sheep pee spoils the drinking water. ”I never tasted the sheep pee in my drinking water!”, she says. She thinks that the tree level gets higher, if the sheep are not there. And she hates trees. The view without the trees is pure wilderness to her. There are several cottages on the Ulriken mountain. Some of them are private, some of them owned by for example sport clubs. The last cottages were build around 1930´s. It is not allowed to build new ones and if an old cottage runs down, it is not allowed to build it again. Path mapped in summer 2004.