Day 54 - Parnu to Palmse

Tallinn Gate

After breakfast we had a look at the nearby Tallinn Gate, the only remaining gate from the old city wall, and the map of medieval Parnu etched into the floor of an amphitheatre in the park. We also went to see the Red Tower (which is actually white) but it is closed on Mondays. We then had morning tea in a nice coffee shop in the main shopping centre before combing the Tourist Office for maps and brochures of interest.


We have a thing for exploring Baltic beaches, and since it was a nice day, our next stop was to have a look at the Parnu seaside. It was very evidently devoid of any summer type accoutrements and any people except a handful of hardy souls walking along the seashore. After a short walk, with Laura pronouncing, after dipping her hand in, that the sea water didn’t feel any colder than Coogee we drove on to look at a number of sculptures in a nearby park. There were not greatly inspiring, mostly carvings of wood or stone, but some had interesting faces on them. We also stumbled across a memorial to the MS Estonia, read about it here if you don’t already know about this 1994 ferry disaster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Estonia

The clock was ticking and there were many kilometres to be covered before we rested tonight so we hit the road for Lahemaa National Park, east of Tallinn on Estonia’s north coast. We reached Paide in time to have another late lunch from the local, rather small, supermarket. By about 3:00pm we had made it to Palmse where the National Park’s excellent information centre is located. The lady there started a 17 minute slide show on the park in the 200 seat auditorium just for us. It was interesting to read that the park management are still hoping to see the park reach the stage of having no active farming or logging within its boundaries.

A beaver dam

Given a list of some accommodation options by the centre we subsequently checked into the nearby Park Hotel, which has been superbly renovated from a former distillery. Being in the unaccustomed position of having our accommodation arranged before dark, we set off to do a couple of walks around Oandu. First was the 5km forest nature trail through thick stands of pine and spruce trees, which because of the humidity under the dense forest canopy, was very damp. Some of the path is on boardwalks made of smooth hardwood planks laid length ways, which of course are only slippery when they’re wet. One section in particular showed the effects of serious storm damage, as we walked past trees blown completely over with their entire root system, about two metres in diameter, still attached and supporting a whole mini-ecosystem of bugs, worms and fungi. Having survived that walk without any serious slips and without being carried off by Baltic mosquitoes, we drove on a little further to walk the 1km beaver trail. We didn’t see any actual beavers but we saw evidence of them with two dams they had built across the stream. The information boards on both walks were really informative, giving lots of information in both Estonian and English about the geological history of the land and the plants and animals found in the vicinity.

With darkness approaching we drove into Vosu to get cash from the ATM (our hotel doesn’t take cards), and had reached the supermarket, wherein lies the village’s only ATM, at 7:01pm to find that it closed at 7:00pm. Fortunately they let us in to use the ATM but I kept getting a system error on my card of choice (a Mastercard) so had to resort to the backup (a Visa card on a different bank) which thankfully worked. Since there didn’t seem to be any eateries open either we returned to eat at our hotel’s restaurant. The dinner was very tasty, especially the soups.

The only two complaints we had were that the WiFi didn’t work, and there seemed to be a steady stream of flies appearing in our room, though a swinging towel made short work of one problem. The heated floor in our bathroom was a real treat though – toasty warm tiles to walk on!