Soomaa National Park
We arrived in Soomaa in time for lunch (since we'd brought it with us
there wasn't much danger of missing it) which we ate under a wooden shelter. It was
the oddest meal of the trip, a selection of salads accompanied by what
turned out to be chocolate bread - probably meant as the pudding.
We went into the tourist centre to be briefed, then set off into the park.
We walked on a narrow boardwalk through a birch forest. If you've ever seen
any of Klimt's paintings of birch woods you will have some idea what it was like,
except that this was midsummer rather than autumn, so there was green undergrowth
between the silver trunks instead of brown leaves. The boardwalk was necessary as the
forest is really a kind of swamp with trees growing in it - 'a superb breeding
ground for mosquitoes' according to the tourist information. They were
right. Estonia in general is a superb breeding ground for mosquitoes in my
experience, but this was the worst. Several of the more macho members of the party
were in shorts and T-shirts, and you could see the welts appearing on their
exposed skin. Juliet was going round in a public-spirited way offering to
spray us all with insect repellent. The mosquitoes didn't seem to mind it, and
could bite through cloth anyway, so there wasn't anything we could do to keep them
out. This was the kind of country Estonian partisans hid out in during the war,
and you could see how impossible it must have been for the Nazis to
root them out.
We stopped to look at a tree that had been felled by beavers. The neat teeth marks
went about two-thirds of the way in, and then were replaced by rough torn fibres where
the tree had collapsed. For some reason, the beavers had left this tree where
it was instead of using it for their dam.
Emerging from the forest, we walked for some time along its edge, still
sticking to the boardwalk with wetland on the other side of us. Eventually we came
to what looked like a small hill. In fact it was the edge of a
raised peat bog - the peat builds up for centuries until the whole area is
several metres higher than the surrounding countryside. Standing on it
felt like being on top of a springy mattress. There was an observation tower
nearby, and we all queued up to stand on it and look at the view. It was
bleak country, but oddly familiar, reminding me of parts of the New Forest -
a great expanse of heather and grey-brown vegetation under a heavy purple sky which
threatened a storm at any moment. The guide showed us some of the plants, a few
of which I knew from similar areas of Britain: cotton grass, bog myrtle and the
carnivorous sundew, as well as the strong-smelling marsh tea, which I
didn't know.
The boardwalk led us through the bog and around a couple of large
ponds. The guide said that bogwater was very good for the skin, and
invited us to swim in it, but the only person brave enough to try
was Mark's brother Robert, who dived in and swam around for some time,
apparently enjoying the black water. Mark and Klaire were led off by the guide to take
part in yet another Estonian wedding custom,
this one involving plaiting a red flower and a yellow flower together
and hiding them in a secret part of the bog. I was walking round one of
the ponds when Creina, some way behind me, decided to change direction, stepped off the boardwalk
and started to sink. Trying to extricate herself, she lost her balance and
fell in. Fortunately there were plenty of people to pull her out again.
Somehow the storm didn't arrive. We drove to another part of the park, where
we saw a canoe that was being carved out of a single alder trunk. After
the trunk has been hollowed out, the timber is gradually stretched until
it is wide enough to sit in comfortably. There was a river here with a
precarious rope bridge which we all took turns to cross. Some, like me,
crossed it in a sort of crouch holding the uncomfortably low handropes,
while others walked confidently upright. No one fell in, despite the
attempts of the cricketers to shake them off.
Soomaa was the wildest place we visited on the trip. Afterwards, we drove on to our night's
lodging near Pärnu, the so-called summer capital of Estonia, and next day went on to
Haapsalu.
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