East or West?

Day 78

It was an odd start to the day as we were unsure where to head next - should we go east or should we go west?  We felt Tallinn deserved a second look but were also reluctant to go back that particular day as we sensed that the overcast weather would hinder the experience somewhat.

Over breakfast we read up on Estonia in the Lonely Planet and Googled the ‘Top 10 Estonia’ and ‘must see’s’ eventually deciding on heading east for the day to Lahemaa National Park. 

Lahemaa is described as the perfect country retreat from the capital with a coastline indented with peninsulas and a pine-fresh forest hinterland – almost sounds like an air freshener ad.

We navigated our way out of the city and to Lahemaa National Park without too much difficulty but once there it was all guesswork. The GPS hadn’t downloaded the area in adequate detail and it was all just a green blob of forest on our digital map.  We drove in on the most obvious road and wound up in the small, rundown town of Loksa, where we located the tourist office.  

It was a dark and dingy little place with a very small selection of random leaflets and postcards from about 20 years ago. From what we gathered from the broken English of the man behind the desk was that he specialised in Loksa only and he couldn’t help with anything else but direct us to the bigger information booth.  He pointed us to another tourist office that could help, which was roughly 10km away in a place called Palmse. 

His directions were spot on, as we found Palmse easily and admired the historic Manor house that was located next to the tourist office.  Now armed with a cycle and hiking map we drove up towards a small town called Vosu and then into Lepispea to find a camping spot for the night.  We spotted a camping ground in Lepispea and after spending the last two nights in a place with all the amenities we just couldn’t resist having another night. Luke was also quite pleased with the basketball and volleyball laying around the place and he could go off and play with himself.

Palmse Manor - looks so good you could eat it. 

Once parked up we set off on our pushbikes to explore the Kosum peninsula and hopefully spot some of the local wildlife that had been noted in our guidebook, such as Moose, Linx and the odd Brown Bear.  Apparently you can see the claw marks of the Brown Bear on trees in certain areas!

We road through the small town of Kosum and stumbled across an unexpected hive of activity.  There were loads of people all setting up for the annual Folk festival that was kicking off that night. Food and market stalls were beginning to line the tiny streets, with huge slabs of Salmon being smoked (with wood chips) on hot coals just beside the road. We checked out the music line up and it looked completely foreign (surprise, surprise being in Estonia) with no Angus and Julia Stone or Josh Pyke.

The Estonian method of Smoked Salmon.

A couple of stalls setup roadside for the festival.

As the market stalls petered out we found and followed the path that lead us deep into the forest. We soon found ourselves at the most northerly point of the national park where spooky old ruins of Soviet buildings and watchtowers remained.

Riding to the coastal tip of Kosum you can find a lot of old Soviet
relics such as this lookout tower and military unit.

Zipping through the forest to try and avoid any
bears that apparently lurk in the woods.

Estonian Ayres Rock.

The pine needle and sandy track looped us back around through the dense woods to Kosum. Kosum was getting a lot busier, with hoards of people arriving and we could hear the music from one of the stages but not understand it – we could only assume it was Estonian Folk.

We headed home for dinner but not before repairing yet another tyre puncture, which went off like a shotgun on the road out.  As we pulled on to the grassy footpath, a lovely elderly man came out of his house to offer us his ‘puncture repair kit in a can’. Unfortunately, the valve for his canister and our tuber were different, so we tried to communicate with smiles and gestures that it wouldn’t work. After a short while (and a bit of German, which he understood) he realised we had it under control, but sitting by the fence until Luke had repaired it and he saw us off on our way home.