Monday 9th August mileage 4820 South of Tartu Estonia

Weather fine all day.
Woke up showered washed and started to pack away tent etc.  Anita was alraedy up and packed and doing "Internet".  Said goodbye to Anita, wishing her well on her travels, she is going to work her way down the Baltic coastline, and just see where she ends up .  Set off and decided to go to Vosu on the North coastline as the guidebook mentions a "Beaver Trail" where you can see live beaver !!
As I went out of Tallin noticed it was very industrial power stations etc. and the housing had changed to russian style high rise blocks.

Missed another graet photo opportunity, but couldn,t stop in time.  There was a huge (long) train pulling oil tank type carraiges and each tank was buff in colour, but because it was centre top filling each tank had a dirty black section in the middel area.  Clearly the tanks are filled untill the spill over.  I bet they have a few groundwater contamination issues at the filling stations.

Less traffic on the roads and the vehicles are not so new and shiny as Finland.  You do see the occasional new Mercedes or Audi but usually it is older mercedes that are on the roads.  The landscape is flat but interspersed with farmland and forests.  Makes you realise that the russians wanted the grain fform this region as well as the strategic defence from the Baltic coast.  As I rode past the forrests I kept thinking about the people who lived in them for years and years.  As you approach Vosu it is a Nature Reserve although I have not seen any animals or birds generally.  In fact I have not seen any birds of preyt since I left England.  I would have expected to see loads of Kestrels, Buzzards etc. but nothing.

Again thought I knew better than tomtom and followed a small track along the coast.  Eventually it stopped at the end of a peninsular and I had to turn back.  At least without sound on the tomtom I didn,t have to listen to that woman saying "turn around when possible" for ages.

Saw a great storks nest at the side of the road.

Arrived at a small harbour called Vergi and stopped to take photos of the Estonian Border Patrol Boats.

Now onto the village of Altja to find the beaver trail.  Had trouble finding it and after variuos backtracking operaqtions came across a Nature Centre.  When I arrived there was no electricity ( storm last night!) so the woman just showed me around and I couldn,t see the video.  As we were going around the electricity came back on so saw the video in the end.  The exhibition had stuffed bear and beaver.

The building had been there since 1850 and throughout all the regime changes had always been a forrestry centre.  Watched the video about all the (shy!) animals in the forrest. These include mouse, red deer, roe deer, lynx, wolves, foxes, badger, beaver, racoon dog (ugliest thing I,ve seen in a long while) etc.  The woman gave me good directions to the beaver trail but said you only see beaver very early in the morning or very late at night.  So decided to content myself with seeing the dams, I,d come this far !!

So off I went, or so I thought !!  Tried to set off but had left the disc lock on !! The bike jumped on me and again down it went.  No damage, so this time I removed the top box and hey presto I managed to lift it up on my own.  I thought at least nobody saw me this time, but then as I was about to set off again a car that was parked opposite just started up and drove off. You think they would have offerred to help !!  There is a bright byellow card attached to the disc lock to remind you that it is still in place.  This I attach to the offside handlebar.  In future I will pass it over the ignition switch and fasten it to the hearside handlebar.

Another TOSR moment !!

Here are the photos of the beaver dams !

Now headed for Tartu the student town of Estonia.  On the way to Tartu saw loads of fallen trees from the storm the night before.  It must have been much worse here to do this much damage.  Some poor person had a tree fall on their house.

Stopped for provisions so I coulkd cook if need be and kept on headed for Tartu.  Noticed there were not any signs for campsites and as it started to get late I started to look for places wher I could just camp without anyone knowing. Tried a couple of back roads, but something was telling me it didn,t feel or look right so kept on going.  Eventually saw signs for caravan parking so went in there and they were more than happy for me to camp the night.  Cost was just 50EEK and there is about 15 EEK to the pound.  Nice place with good clean showers and facilities.  Because I arrived late I cooked late so eat my evening meal in the dark.

Back into Tartu tomorrow for a l,ook around then on to Valga and eventually Latvia.

Please keep the comments coming, It makes me feel in touch.

TOR