Devastation, and trips in the mountains, - Nurhan's take:

 The little chap with Kin is a six month old Pyranes Sheep Dog.

 He's not shy and he's unfussed that he's the same size as Kin's head as the two play together!

Locally Staten's Vegvesen (Government agency that deals with roads) is cutting down a whole heap of trees as they need access to get a machine in to do test bores for a new tunnel that is planned to go under Stavanger for the main road Oslo-Stavanger-Bergen. We'll see how this develops.

More irritatingly is what is going on at Bråstein. Bråstein is owned by Sandnes kommune, and admistrated by Staten's Skog (Forestry Commission). So in effect the people own the forest. Now as far as I can see it someone has become greedy as they have now allowed a private company to 'help' maintain the wood... by the paths, they have thinned out the trees:

Away from the paths, they seem to have gone for a 'scorched earth policy':

 This used to be a beautiful, tranquil woodland, which has been laid waste in the most brutal manner. This is not sustainable harvest, it's rape of a natural resource without any reflection on the folk who regularly enjoyed this area. There are many more areas that have been destroyed in this manner.

As the large piles of felled trees indicate.

Also they are destroying the paths, that the Kommune worked on only about two years ago:

The machines that are being used are just about 'go anywhere' and make a land rover look like a 'sissy mobile'.

The articulate arm holds a tree, has a blade at the bottom that cuts the tree, and then the 'appocolyps now' rollers that strip the trunk of limbs. Whilst the folk using the machinary are obviously skilled they show no regard for folk who use the woods. Felling trees across the paths, sending wood chips flying.


Someone should be brought to account for the damage that is being created.

This weekend it was planned to take a trip into the mountains and give Kin his first taste of being in a kennel, unfortunately it turned out that it is a school holiday and the kennels are all full. Happily for me, Jan looked after Kin from Saturday to Sunday meaning that David, Svein, and I had a weekend up in the mountains.

(From left to right, me, David, Svein). Saturday was lovely, sunny but four degrees Celsius. Above 650 m there was some snow where the sun hadn't got to it. We took an 11 km stroll into Skåpet, a Stavanger Turistforening cabin.

Here we tried to fit Svein with a sheep bell so we'd know where he was when he wondered off.

Cabin sleeps six (friends) and is very cosy:

The walk out the next day wasn't so good weather. We started off walking in sleet with a wind of ~ 12 m/s fortunately coming from behind. There were fresh elk footprints going straight past the cabin the next morning (and I'd thought the noise that I'd heard in the night had just been David snoring).

Jan, as always, had done a sterling job with Kin;  the little chap was happy to see me, and I'm slowly achieving the balance between being a 'single parent' family and doing other things that I enjoy.