I recently went on a bike tour with a friend. He has been riding studded tires for decades, riding long tours with thousands of metres of elevation gain. Mainly in the Bernese Oberland, where he lives, but also in other parts of Switzerland. In short, he is a mountain biker through and through. His name doesn't matter.

At some point, I ask him about the situation of mountain bikers on single trails in the canton of Bern. I want to know how he deals with the fact that he often rides on narrow trails illegally. His reaction surprises me: "Really, there are trails where you're not allowed to ride a mountain bike?" The man from Bern, who spends several weeks a year on his mountain bike in the Bernese Oberland, has never heard that he is only allowed to ride on narrow trails that are explicitly approved for this purpose.

When I tell him about the debate surrounding mountain bikers on narrow trails in the canton of Bern, about the forest and road laws, about lobby organizations for trail biking and others who are fighting against it, he says: "You're telling me about a world I've never been to."

Even in the canton of Bern, conflicts are the exception

This shows me two things: my view of the canton of Bern is dominated by the discussion about single trails. Of course, I know that despite the legal restrictions, thousands of mountain bikers also have fun on Bernese trails and neither get fined by the meter nor have unfriendly encounters on a regular basis. But I wouldn't have thought it possible that the discussion hadn't reached everyone, that at least one long-time biker hadn't even heard about it.

The second insight is simpler: we didn't encounter a handful of pedestrians on the single trails we rode that day. And if we did, we slowed down and greeted them as usual, whereupon both parties continued on their way in good spirits. Conflicts between bikers and walkers are a problem in urban areas. As long as you avoid the hotspots, they are the rare exception and certainly not the rule. Not even in the canton of Bern, where pedestrians even have the road and forest laws on their side. If they are keen to assert their prerogative.

Finally, the relaxed situation is also due to the fact that there are no hordes of mountain bikers on the single trails in the region we were in. So we hardly leave a trace. If nobody notices us, nobody can get upset about us. It's as simple as that. But that's not the case everywhere.

And my Bernese bike buddy, he rides his laps completely unimpressed by all this because he doesn't know anything about it, except for the quick bleach I gave him. I envy him a little and regret having drawn his attention to it. He now wants to do some research.