Back on the coast…

A week wandering on the west coast of Estonia, along the Baltic Sea. For a change from the mainland, we “hopped” to the island of Saaremaa before continuing our journey south.…

Our weekend on the shore of Lake Peipsi was rather nice. As the weather forecast predicted, we had all kinds of weather possible (apart from snow, perhaps), which allowed us to admire the lake in the sun, with and without wind, with large storm clouds on the horizon or even, without a horizon, when the rain was so close that you could feel the blow of the showers about to arrive.

Back to the West… (4/08/2024)

We tried to do some research on the famous dead fish along the shore (new ones would arrive every time we went to the beach). Searching the Estonian press online, we found an article from last summer explaining that Estonian lakes (including Lake Peipsi) had suffered a lack of oxygen and an increase in water temperature due to the heat, which led to a high mortality of fish, which were washed up on the shores of the lakes. We thought that maybe it was the same phenomenon that was happening this year. Since Lake Peipsi is so shallow, as soon as it gets a little warm, the water must quickly warm up, losing oxygen and the most sensitive fish species do not survive… We didn’t find any press articles from this year, but perhaps we are only at the beginning of the phenomenon…

That morning, we hit the road again and, since we were only 16 km away and there was a village and a nice church there, we obviously went to see the Russian border… It is the Narva River that marks the limit of Estonia at this point. The road reaches the small fishing village of Vasknarva, on the edge of the lake, where until a few years ago there was a ferry to cross the river and enter Russia. Obviously, the ferry no longer exists and crossing the river is strictly forbidden for any boat. On the Estonian side, in the middle of the village dotted with numbered posts indicating the border area, there is a watchtower and a radar (like those that monitor ships at sea). On the Russian side, a few houses and a huge mast with a huge flag, clearly indicating to anyone who would like to try that crossing the river will be at their own risk…

Unlike Finland, there is no security zone in Estonia. You can get right down to the river bank (where there are also the ruins of an old medieval castle), and Russia is right there, on the other side, just 100-150 m away… On the other hand, the use of drones is prohibited, and it may be a coincidence, but about 1 km before reaching the village, Marvin’s GPS started to “get lost” and then no longer indicated any position. Everything went back to normal as soon as we moved away from the border…

This is probably the closest we will get to Russia, and frankly, from the banks of the Narva River, this whole idea of ​​delimiting everything with borders seemed a bit ridiculous. In fact, some old people chatting there, on a bench in front of their orchard, were speaking Russian among themselves, although they undoubtedly had Estonian passports. Some will see remnants of a still recent past in this, but we prefer to see it as proof that borders are ultimately symbolic lines that only have the value we want to give them…

On these philosophical reflections we resumed our journey westwards. The interior of Estonia does not have much interest in terms of landscapes. Just fields, fields and more fields… Corn, wheat, potatoes and fodder, all sprinkled with some hedges and groves, to make it all a little nicer. And then, from time to time, there is a forest that, for one reason or another, still resists the agricultural advance like a small Gallic village facing the Roman legions… It is in one of these forests that we settled for that night. We were close to one of these RMK sites we spoke about in a previous post, but this time we preferred to follow the trail a little further and find a more isolated place, in the middle of the forest, where as soon as we arrived we found chanterelles! We just needed to decide whether we trust our ability to identify mushrooms or whether we play it safe… 😜

From the top of the cliffs (5/08/2024)

We left our beautiful forest in the morning, when the sun was beginning to slip through the trees. It was barely 12ºC… Now we know that if it gets too hot on the coast, you just have to go back inland to be a little cooler… 😉

In the end we were a bit cowards and preferred not to eat our chanterelles… We left them in the forest for the next person who will pass by… With blueberries we can still take some risks, but mushrooms are a bit scary when you don’t know them…

Today’s journey took us back to the Baltic Sea coast, this time about fifty kilometres west of Tallinn. We went backwards a bit, but this is only because on our initial itinerary we had overlooked the cliffs that can be found on this part of the coast. Well, it’s not Bonifacio or the Opal Coast, but in a country whose highest point is only 318 m high, any relief is remarkable! 😜

Also, to be honest, they are only 25m high at their highest point, but the cliffs of Türisalu and Pakri are equally impressive when you get close to the edge and see the sea below, just like that, with no protective barrier or warning sign of the “small step” of 25m between land and water… 🤓

At the end of the Pakri peninsula lies the lighthouse of the same name. Just like in Denmark, the Estonian coast is crumbling under the attacks of the ocean, and the original Pakri lighthouse is today nothing more than a stone base balancing on the last few centimetres of cliff that still support it. Unlike the one in Denmark, which had been moved, the Pakri lighthouse was demolished (up to the first floor of its base) and rebuilt 80 m away in a more modern and, let’s admit, slightly less aesthetic version… It may be the tallest lighthouse in Estonia (52 m high), but perhaps with a good coat of paint it would look a little less ugly… 🤣

All the cliffs are slowly crumbling, here as elsewhere, and if we stayed not far from the lighthouse, we took the precaution of leaving five or ten meters between Marvin and the cliff, just in case. In any case, that doesn’t change anything about the view we had that day: the two small islands of Pakri right in front (in fact, we only see the first one, which hides the second one…) and the vast ocean right next to them, on the right, with Stockholm and Sweden as the only horizon, but a bit far away for us to see them from here… 😉

Not far from us, the RMK has installed a staircase that allows you to go down to the foot of the cliff. There is no beach or anything like that, but it allows you to change your perspective and realize that the lower part of the cliff is actually nothing more than a pile of more or less large rocks that have broken off from the wall. We also found two dead seals, one in the water and the other stranded at the foot of the cliff. No need to say that the place does not really invite you to swim… 😜

On an island in the sun… (6/08/2024)

The west coast of Estonia has a few islands, three or four of which are a bit more important (in terms of size). It is on two of these islands, Muhu and Saaremaa, that we will spend the next few days, just to get a little bit of a change from the mainland and see if the beaches are more welcoming and the sunsets more beautiful when you move a little away from the coast…

During that day we went to Virtsu from where, after less than 30 minutes on a ferry, we disembarked on the island of Muhu, connected to its larger neighbour, the island of Saaremaa, by a narrow strip of land, but separated from the rest of Estonia by a small arm of the Baltic Sea: the Suur Strait (at least in summer, since in winter, an ice road connects the island to the mainland, without the need for a ferry)…

What is most striking when you arrive on Muhu is that everything seems peaceful. The houses are pretty, with millimetre-cut grass and flowers everywhere, the signs are made of engraved wood and even the fishing ports seem to have been tidied up and cleaned (perhaps the presence of a “boutique hotel” with a view over the sea right next door also had something to do with it… 🤔). According to the official website, Muhu is the island where time itself rests. This is certainly an appropriate slogan…

We stopped by the Muhu museum to learn a little more about the island. The place is actually a very small village, Koguva, preserved as they all were at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also the birthplace of Juhan Smuul, an Estonian writer and journalist whose family home has been incorporated into the museum. Apart from the thatched roofs, there is not much difference with traditional Andorran houses, but the place is still nice and interesting. The most curious thing was certainly two maps hanging on the wall of an old school: Russia and the Baltic region as they were at the beginning of the 20th century. Let’s say that things have changed a bit since then…

After that, we came to settle down at the water’s edge, at Oosaare beach, where we worked on our integration by practicing the favorite activity of the inhabitants of Muhu: sitting and relaxing in front of the sea… 😜

Robinsons (7/08/2024)

The sunset over the cane fields of Muhu, the night before, was not bad at all. And to enjoy even more our privileged position, we went up to Marvin’s terrace to have a little aperitif in front of the sea and the setting sun… Not bad at all, we tell you… 😉

And in the morning, before leaving Muhu to get to its bigger sister, Saaremaa, we made a short detour to the bakery we had found the night before thanks to the website visitstonia.com (the first one we found since we left Tallinn!…). The island’s specialty is Leib, a black bread with a gingerbread texture. It was still warm when we bought it and… it was really delicious! 😜 We also bought a banana cake and cinnamon buns, and although they are not the island’s specialty, they were also delicious! No need to say that we have a mandatory stop on the way back, before taking the ferry back to the mainland!…

After this gastronomic stop, we headed to Saaremaa, connected to Muhu by a one- or two-kilometre dike. The two islands are quite similar, except for their size (Saaremaa is much larger than Muhu) and the architecture of the houses (on Saaremaa we saw many grey brick houses). The landscapes, on the other hand, are quite similar on both islands…

The peculiarity of Saaremaa, apart from being the largest island in Estonia with 2,673 km², is that the island was hit by nine meteorites relatively recently. Well, we are still talking about 1530-1450 BC, but that makes them one of the most recent meteorite impacts, and almost the only ones (with two others) that fell in an inhabited area (well, okay, back then, there must not have been many people in the village of Kaali either, but still…). The largest of the craters measures 110 m in diameter and tends to accumulate rainwater, forming a small “lake”. Scientists estimated that the meteor had an impact speed of 10 to 20 km/s and a mass of 20 to 80 tons. At an altitude of 5-10 km and due to atmospheric friction, it broke into nine pieces, with the largest fragment producing the main crater, with a depth of 22 m. Admittedly, without the explanation on the various signs on-site, we would have had the impression of being in front of a large puddle, a little deeper than normal, but when you know what you are looking at, it is quite impressive to imagine that it was a meteorite that made all this…

We then headed to the northwest of the island and to Kuriku Beach, a large pebble strip that runs along the entire coastline of a small peninsula jutting out to the north. The place is quite spectacular: the pine forest reaches up to about twenty metres from the water, and the rest is a long pebble beach where we settled down with Marvin, right between the trees and the Baltic Sea. We felt a bit like Robinson Crusoe on our peninsula tip. We were alone in the world, with only a group of Arctic terns fishing in front of us and some cormorants and seagulls lazily resting on the large rocks jutting out of the water. The only problem was that we had not refilled our water tanks for a few days, but we managed to ration ourselves so that we could stay there for two days, in this spectacular place!…

A bit too short (50 m only)…… (9/08/2024)

After two days completely alone in the world on our pebble beach, right on the edge of the forest, we had to come back to reality. We enjoyed our solitude, made a campfire to warm ourselves when night fell, walked along the beach, but hey, if we made it to the end of Saaremaa Island, it was also to see the Kiipsaare lighthouse in Vilsandi National Park. So this morning, we hit the road again to cover the 15 km of (very) dusty track that separated us from the entrance to the National Park (motor vehicles are prohibited inside the park).

Vilsandi National Park is a coastal-marine park (which means that its importance lies more in the marine and dune ecosystems that it protects than in the pine forest that occupies the centre of the peninsula). It was at the end of this peninsula that we wanted to go, since that is where the Kiipsaare lighthouse is located.

It was in 1933 that the construction of this 25m high lighthouse was completed, intended to guide ships along the northern coast of Saaremaa Island. However, sea currents being what they are and sand not being known for its resistance to currents, the Kiipsaare lighthouse, which back then stood 150m inland, quickly found itself with its feet in the water and then its knees in the water, as it stands 50m out at sea today! The base on which the lighthouse stands was also damaged by storms and currents, to the point that the lighthouse quickly began to tilt. Its generator was removed for safety in 1992 and the Kiipsaare lighthouse remained in the archives as a landmark until 2009, known as Estonia’s Tower of Pisa, before being completely abandoned. Ironically, the same storms that had tilted it also brought it back a little more upright a few years later, but by then the lighthouse had already been decommissioned…

We then headed to the southern tip of the island, another peninsula at the end of which we spent the night, very close to another lighthouse, the Sörve lighthouse. This one still has its feet on the ground and is still in operation, marking the southern tip of the island and the north of the Irbe Strait, the main exit from the Gulf of Riga (and therefore from Latvia) to the Baltic Sea, just 27 km from here as the crow flies. If there was a ferry we would get to Riga faster through here, but… we will have to do it by road and return to the mainland before driving down to Latvia… But that will be the subject of another post, in a few days… 😉

For a little anecdote, since our arrival in Estonia, we have seen quite a few seals stranded on the beaches (one per day, on average). Today, after finding another one, we asked at the local tourist office why we were seeing so many. The answer is that the seals get caught in the fishermen’s nets and drown (seals, being mammals, need air to breathe, just like us). So, the fishermen throw them back into the water when they haul in their nets, and the currents take care of the rest, Estonian beaches ending up receiving all the seal carcasses in a more or less advanced state of decomposition… It’s a delight for seagulls and other scavengers of all kinds, but it’s not really inviting for swimming (although it doesn’t seem to bother the locals too much)… 🤢

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On Muhu, as on Saarema, LEAVE NO TRACE!

– Always travel on public ways and respect the signs.
– Limit noise and interfere as little as possible with wildlife.
– Respect the other users.
– Leave rocks, plants and other natural features as you found them and respect historic sites.
– Take your waste with you and throw it into the appropriate containers, in the nearest village.
– Do not camp inside protected areas and do not make any fires.