Estonia. Land of trees, bogs and sometimes trees and bogs.

Our adventure began at 5am on Monday the 22nd of April, when Iain and I had somehow managed to trick and cajole our respective parents into driving us to Gatwick Airport. I have a sneaking suspicion that both our fathers would have liked to have come on the trip, especially Iain’s dad Nigel, who took an interest in bike maintenance and our gear which bordered on obsession. Though, his help was invaluable none-the-less. I myself feel a deep debt of gratitude that I’m sure I was far to English to express towards my own parents for all their help towards beginning this trip, and Iain does to his.

We effectively scammed our overweight luggage onto the plane by carrying massive hand luggage and writing a weight on the bike boxes which was a good kilogram less than they actually were.

After a rather uneventful flight, where we ended up sitting next to a member of the tourist board who said to us that we’ll probably get bored if we stay in the town for more than two days (I am rather curious how she is still in a job), we were sat on the floor of Tallinn airport (the world’s cosiest airport should you be at all interested in the cosiness of international airports) assembling our bikes. I for one was about the most stressed I have ever been in my life during this process (thus far). It is probably a disappointment for you, dear reader, that absolutely nothing bad happened whatsoever; it all went perfectly to plan. Despite this we were still very stressed, we didn’t say anything but it showed; conversation and our demeanours were tense. As we rolled the loaded bikes out of the airport gates Iain declared ‘that if anything, it’s all gone rather too well’ I agreed something bad was going to have to happen to make up for this.

We walked into town following the major motorway, initially it resembled the outskirts of any modern conurbation anywhere in the world. Retail parks, petrol stations and concrete overpasses. Gradually though a sense of place began to emerge; ramshackle wooden buildings with a distinctly Eastern European feel to them, trams and peculiar Estonian shops proliferated. Whilst I rhapsodised about one such rustic wooden building, Iain remained doggedly unimpressed, declaring ‘it’s a shit-hole, and should have been painted about 14 years ago’.

We pressed on into the medieval heart of Tallinn and our hostel the Monk’s Bunk, which sat above a hookah bar and next to a sex shop. It was a great friendly little place ran by a motely crew of Aussies, Americans, Brazilians, Belgians, Britons and of course Estonians.  

I ended up eating a fittingly Baltic meal of herring, dill, sour cream and potatoes (Iain had a burger) in the rather unfitting surroundings of an Irish pub; ‘The Dubliner’, which was of the type of ubiquitous ‘pub’ establishment which proliferated further than the Irish diaspora ever managed to do. It was however delightfully cheap and satisfyingly generous with the portions and really as hungry large lads, what more can you ask for?

We took in the sights of Tallinn which is a small town on a walking tour lead by a beautiful (by and large all the women in Tallinn are beautiful and well dressed) blonde and rather bouncy (in the least euphemistic sense) tour guide. The subject matter of the tour seemed to largely revolve around the various subjugations of the Estonians over the years by foreign powers. Be they the Danes, Crusading [land grabbing] Teutonic Knights, German Merchants, Swedish and Russian Imperial Armies and lastly the terrible occupations by the Soviets the Nazis and the Soviets again. She seemed to glance over the rather charming architectures that these various invaders left behind (with the obvious exception of the Soviets and Nazis who managed to destroy swathes of the town through various exercises with high explosives and bombings). I remember mostly the fairy tale gothic spires and narrow cobbled streets brought to the town by the Hansa. Estonia though, despite having a history many thousands of years old, is a young country and they are understandably pleased with their current 21 years of independence. They do however hold their recently erected freedom monument with contempt, viewing it as an expensive and largely meaningless piece of nation building, which I feel is the requisite amount of self-loathing to be considered a self-confident nation. (Iain thought it was a fancy shaped rock that had been double glazed).

That night we saw to the proper business of being a Northern European and being in Tallinn; getting drunk. The hostel staff were relaxing with us in the common room as we were the only remaining guests along with our French roommate, Xavier. We ended up sinking several (very good value) strong ciders and beers before heading out to an open mic night in another more bustling hostel. The climax of this evening was a booming cockney accented man taking the stage and singing a raucous rendition of the Proclaimers’ ‘I would walk 500 miles’ and the entire bar joining in.

Needless to say we were very hungover the next day. This was meant to be our first day cycling. It was not a successful day. After languishing around until about 11am we finally packed our bags and hit the road at about 2pm. This was much to amusement of the hostel staff who were cajoling us to stay another night, but we demurred deciding that if we did not leave now we never would.  But as we rounded the corner heading for the edge of town I turned to Iain and said ‘are you scared’, he replied ‘yes’, I said ‘good, because I’m fucking terrified’.

Escaping from Tallinn proved to be a harrowing ride on pavements and cyclepaths next to thrumming and endless heavy traffic. Upon our eventual escape to the west we hit a lovely cyclepath and enjoyed glorious sunshine but had to endure brutal and relentless freezing headwinds, which made it feel like we were moving through treacle and the gusts were like being hit by a hammer. We reached the perfect campsite by 5pm and though we were barely 10 miles out of Tallinn we called it a day and pitched camp.

It was very cold camping, everyone had told us it was too cold to camp, we laughed and declared that mad dogs and Englishmen fear no discomfort. Turns out we didn’t enjoy it much despite the perfect locale and elected to press on to a town to stay in a hostel on the next day rather than camp.

So we did a solid 60 miles, again into the wind, but our limbs were not full of the ache of our hangovers and so it was not a too painful ride to Haapsalu, where we stayed in a very well kept hostel above a bowling alley, unfortunately as a plot device there was nothing amusing that resulted from being above a bowling alley. I could make up a funny bowling related anecdote but that would be a lie. The most striking feature of Haapsalu is its grandiose episcopal castle which looks like it has leapt straight out of a fairy tale, especially with a full golden harvest moon hanging over the marshes and bogs of Estonia’s flat lands. But for all its impressive battlements and towers I was most taken by its brilliant play-park.

We left Haapsalu in the late morning, aiming for the seaside town of Parnu, almost as soon as we mounted our bikes it began to rain. It rained, it rained and then it rained some more. It was cold rain, it was cruel rain, it was fucking bastard shite rain, we were soon soaked through and despite all our layers we were bitterly cold. We were riding through what can only be politely described as the arse end of fucking nowhere, there was no shelter, if we stopped pushing our heavy bikes even for a moment we would probably die of exposure. It was hard. It was miserable. Our only brief respite came in the form of a petrol station were we used the hand drier on our sorry chilled bones to try and gain some warmth and life back and we wolfed down without question a dubious petrol station Kebab. This was at the half way point. I remember little else of the next 35 miles other than the fact it was wet, cold and hard. There were no opt out points until we reached Parnu. If we camped we were so wet and so cold we would probably have died.

We finally reached Parnu as triumphant yet shivering wretches at about 7 O’Clock. We found a hostel and peeled off our soaking layers and enjoyed the central heating soft warm beds. Mostly though we were happy to be indoors, we would have paid to sit in a bare room, let alone a dorm. It did however become increasingly noticeable that this hostel had a distinct ‘One flew over the cuckoo’s’ nest vibe. With broad dark corridors and solid doors, a strange and almost bizarrely elderly clientele, a sad solitary chair sat in front of an old fashioned cathode ray tube TV playing operatic music in the common room and other than this noise a deathly silence hostel made the place feel a bit like a “special” kind of hostel.

Parnu itself is much like the other towns we have passed though in Estonia, a charming old town surrounded by grim and thoroughly dilapidated soviet block architecture. Outside of the centres the buildings look like they’re crumbling back into the sad past of the 1970s.

In the back country there are a few farm houses which all have gigantic and vociferously loud barking wolf dogs acting as sentinels (the barking of dogs is how I think I will remember the back country of Estonia), brutal and again grim soviet crumbling factory structures, and burnt out ruins, but mostly there are endless trees and even more endless bogs. (Iain and I cannot decide if there if there more bogs or more trees, and confuse matters, to quote Iain ‘to be fair sometimes there are bogs and there are trees’)

This is our last night in Estonia, so  what can I say of the country I have experienced? I could try reducing it to a series of nouns; cold, flat, forested, boggy, charming old towns and sad suburbs full of unfriendly people who are slow to even acknowledge the presence of another human being. The country of Estonia seems to sit in a direct contrast to Tallinn which is a thriving metropolis, full of young friendly faces, beautiful women and trendy bars. There is life in Tallinn, the rest of Estonia seems a little sad by comparison.