Country: Estonia
Distance travelled: 93km
Weather: Sunny

At 8am, when I woke, I decided to investigate the hike that started off from our camp site. I wasn’t interested in walking the entire six kilometers but it seemed acceptable, according to the information board, to ride it. I ate an apple to ward off hunger until I had time for a proper breakfast and extracting my bicycle from the garage, kissed Mark goodbye and set off.

The first part led up quite a steep hill to the family cemetery of the manor lords of Taagepera. I pushed my bike up but was disappointed to find it terribly overgrown with very little visible. From there the sometimes overgrown path led though trees to Taagepera cemetery and Ala church. I stopped in the cemetery to try to photograph the lovely lacy ironwork crosses typically used on Estonian graves but the dappled light made photographing their delicate shapes difficult. Estonian cemeteries all seem to be planted amongst stands of pine trees and I found this one frequently had bench seats at the more cared for graves. It seemed a much more restful place then cemeteries at home.

   

I rode on, looking for a sign to a sacrificial rock, reportedly an oblate boulder with vertical sides and a flat top with a hollow which was used for sacrificial rites. There was no sign that I could find but one investigative venture led me to some bright red fungi so the side trip wasn’t all wasted. The track, now following a road, led back to Taagepera past the manor house and then to the camp site, a total distance of about six kilometers.

 

Once back at the van, I ate a welcome though late breakfast and we set off to the ruins of Helme Order castle which we had been aiming for yesterday. There was very little tourist information in English but we did glean that the castle had been destroyed by the Swedish sometime in the 1600’s to deny the Russians any chance of using it. It looked to have been built in a very defensible location and I can understand their reasoning but hate the thought of such destruction.

There was also a healing spring, healing seven different diseases although no explanation of which, and a system of caves in the nearby sandstone cliffs. Most of the cave entrances had collapsed and what we could see were black as pitch no more than ten steps in and with no torch, we were soon out again. The information board stated they had been used as hiding places from foreign invaders before the Livonian crusades and then during the 18th century the owners of the manor nearby built a park around the castle ruins and illuminated and decorated the caverns, building a chapel in one.

After the castle and cave visit we headed on to the border town of Valga where we stopped to grab some groceries, including three jars of rather rare peanut butter. I insisted that I didn’t want to head into Latvia without some form of plan, no matter how approximate, so we stopped in a carpark and connected up to the towns’ free wifi. Eventually we had a plan of attack but realised that again time had passed and it was too late to assault a new country.

This time we headed to the Karula National Park, not far from the southern border of Estonia. There were two other motorhomes at the information centre, a family from Germany and a gentleman from France. People came and went, swimming in the nearby lake and we sat outside after dinner in the cool air until the bugs, not mosquitoes, drove us in to bed.