If you're looking for somewhere quiet to relax and enjoy the nature around you, or simply somewhere to retreat and take a break from busy life, I highly recommend this tour. Thanks to Hannes Ausmees, our guide, me and my mum had an amazing time, definitely we were not disappointed.
Start at the visitor centre in Palmse to get a fine insight into what to see. We then did Sagadi, Altja, Vergi, lunched at Vosu, walked out to the Baltic at Kasmu and came back via the bog walk near Kolga. Such variety and native beauty in a day. The roads are excellent and only the bog is not easy to find given good signage. In May the vegetation was far behind the UK but the birds we saw were majestic - heron, swans, skuas, etc. To get the best out of this area you need to know its history and understand its geology. The Palmse visitor centre has all this if you have not read up in advance.
Lovely to see how this country free from Soviet chains since 1991 is propering and the amount of summer homes there are set in this remote forest area.
It is a lovely national park to drive around in. It is a beautiful, frozen and snowy landscape in wintertime, but I imagine it is even more impressive and varied in the summer. The snow covers up some of the diversity in terms of the very typical bog plantlife, but it is nonetheless beautiful. Nice, quiet area and free to visit. I would pay attention to avoid driving in the dark in the wintertime though as the smaller roads are more snowy and slippery.
The national park has varied attractions with villages and farmland in between. We did many walks - the Viru Bog Trail, the Oandu Old Growth Forest Trail, the coastal and forest walk at Kasmu. There is an excellent art gallery at Vinistu.
Somehow the bus driver got lost and we lost some time but when we finally got there, we split up in a group that went swimming and a group that went to the lookout tower. The water is clear and not too cold but we went pass the swimmers to the tower. Took nice pictures. It was very hot - so take water and sunscreen and a hat because although some stretches of the path is through trees, other parts are crossing water and grass fields. The path is wooden planks above ground level and very nice to walk on, but some places very narrow and it is difficult to pass people coming from the opposite direction.
