Free camping, beaver trails and birds in Soomaa National Park

Zagan the motorhome is free camping, now normally when I say this is means we’re in a normal car park (not a motorhome aire) or somewhere similarly unofficial and not having to pay. This time we are actually camping for free, on a campsite in Estonia in the Soomaa National Park (N58.43074, E25.03012). We have electric hook up, water, a fire pit and free wood, a covered picnic area, small cabins, an earth closet loo (which means thanks to our SOG unit making our loo chemical free, we can empty our toilet cassette) and we are right next to the start of the Beaver Trail (no smutty comments as my Mum reads this blog!) what more could we want?

Our free campsite

In case you are wondering where we are…

Last night Jay was faced with a dilemma, beer or run around the lake. After a reminder that we’re running the Marrakesh Half Marathon in January with our friends, and so far I’ve only managed five miles, he gallantly agreed to accompany me on a run around the lake as pacemaker and motivator. I’m pleased to report that we did it, and even though it took over an hour and a half, was surprisingly hilly and we were under attack from a million mosquitoes, we didn’t stop once. As a reward, you guessed it, Jay got a nice, icy cold beer from the fridge while we watched the locals out on the lake making the most of the last rays of the setting sun.

We woke with a thud this morning as a bird landed on Zagan’s roof. Peeping out the curtains it was daylight but the sun was still quite low, no wonder as it was 4am! Cursing the bird as he hopped around on the roof, we both fell straight back to sleep. When we did finally get up around 9am we were both feeling the affects of yesterday and moved a little slower than usual.

We had a job to do today, find something to stop Zagan’s radiator leaking. It’s not leaking by much, so we figured some Radweld would do the job, all we had to do was find the Estonian equivalent of Halfords. We headed to the other side of Viljandi where there were several shopping centres, but sadly neither the shops nor supermarkets sold anything car related. Spotting a garage we wandered up to it, noting the diesel was €1.02 a litre so we might pop back and fill up. We found some coolant there and asked (in my best Estonian) where we could find an Autopood while pointing at the car bits in the garage shop. When the assistant twigged what I was after (I may have made up a word or two) in perfect English she replied that there was an AutoEkspert just down the road next to Maxima – our Estonian supermarket of choice as there are no Lidl’s here.

Leaving the shop we headed back to Zagan, noticing another couple of petrol station nearby, one selling diesel at €1.04, the other €1.02. We’ll be taking our business to our friendly assistant though as they are the same pri…… hang on a minute! The price for diesel had changed and was now €1.10, we’d only been in the shop a couple of minutes, had something global happened that we were unaware of? Needless to say, we raced back to Zagan, zoomed over and filled up at the cheapest place before prices had chance to jump.

Opening the door into AutoEkspert took me back. It was just like Halfords at home with a display of bike racks on one side, a check out and the ‘customer service’ bit where you go if you don’t have a clue what you need. We’ve visited several such places on our travels, but normally we speak a smattering of either the local language or things will have multi-language labels on them one of which we can vaguely decipher. Here in Estonia the languages of choice were Estonian, Latvian or Russian. Lucky for us the shop had WiFi, and Google Translate was on top form helping us narrow down our choice before an assistant pounced (we were the only customers and there were three staff). We showed him what we thought we needed and he showed us a cheaper version – with instructions in French which Jay can read. €6 later Zagan’s radiator is being sorted and his windsreen washer thingy refilled while I nipped into Maxima and bought a couple of bags of milk and a €0.19 ice cream each – I love that you buy ice cream in a cone from the supermarket freezer.

Satnav chirped up as we typed in our destination that we were headed for an ‘unpaved road’, what she forgot to mention was we’d also be driving on 16 kilometres of it to get here. Almost as soon as we turned off the main road, the black top disappeared and plumes of dust billowed from the back of Zagan as we trundled along at 20 miles per hour. Cutlery rattled in the drawers as I kept a keen eye on the forest for any sign of bears or elks.

That’ll be the end of the road then.

We kicked up some dust too, all the stuff in the cupboards at the back of Zagan has a thin layer on it – must have come through a fridge vent.

We spotted a great little official (and free!) picnic and camping spot with a viewing tower (N58.36654,E25.06231) after a while. Thinking “we’re bound to see something from up there”, as we pulled up to a stop Zagan came under attack from a swarm of what we think were wasps. After five minutes there were too many to count hammering away at his windscreen, so without getting out we set off again in a bid for safety.

No idea what they are, looked like wasps, but they had us penned in

Couldn’t get out of the van, so the board shows what we could have seen!

Another ten minutes down the road and we were at our destination, a larger camping spot next to the information centre for the park. We plugged Zagan into the electricity supply and set off for a walk along the 1.8km Koprarada õpperada (Beaver Trail). The raised boardwalks took us over the marshy land and information boards told us what species of flora and fauna were around. One board pointed out what a great nursery this place was for mosquitoes, sadly we’d already discovered that with Jay managing to swat three in one go as they all feasted on his leg.

Jay can’t resist a go with the log splitter (video to follow!)

Me and pooch at the start of the Beaver Trail

Every spring this place floods, they even do canoe trips in the forest. These markers show the water depth in recent years

Jay and Charlie escaping the mosquitoes

The trail took us through the forest where black Woodpeckers are found, but there weren’t any about today, and there weren’t any beavers either but we did get to see their houses, dams across the river, and where they had gnawed at the trees next to the river to fell them and make their homes bigger.

Beaver dams

You can see where the beavers have started work on these trees.

As we made it back to Zagan, the rain began. So we’ve been holed up this afternoon watching a movie. Jay is on the case with some bangers and mash for tea and the wine has been torn open (yes we’re on our Scandinavian ‘boxed reserve’ already). Below are a few of the birds we did manage to see today in the forest, tonight who knows maybe an Elk or two will pop by to say hello! If you fancy stopping in a free camping place in an Estonian National Park, check out the National Parks website for more info.

Ju x

Bonus pic –

The earth closet, in case you wondered what one was – it’s a fancy pit in the ground