Two weeks ago I went to the Pärnu, the summer capital of Estonia, to have a short SPA vacation with my girlfriend. There sure was no sunshine in this city. I have never been there actually any other time than summer before. During the daylight hours one day, we decided to go to the Tolkuse bog which is not too far from Pärnu, about a 15 min drive towards Latvia, pretty close to the border.
As we started the trail, we had to start by climbing some hills that mostly are sand dunes.
Some places are pretty flooded there this time a year.
Overall it's more interesting to visit bogs any other time than Late fall or winter because the bogs have a huge variety of native plants that are not usually visible during the fall or winter. Still, it's interesting to see a fog I have never been before and it's hard to say no to a great walk and a nice path.
The trail itself was not very long, about 3 kilometers for a round trip. Took us less than an hour.
Soon we arrived at the point where we saw some usual bog lakes. There weren't many of them actually. I have been to bogs where are close to a hundred lakes probably, but here we had 4 if I remember correctly.
This is the point where we started walking back and heading towards the Rannametsa watchtower. You can see it in the photo below.
Some weird Chernobyl trees along the way.
The tower was situated on top of the highest sand dune. Can't remember the exact height but I think it was around 90 meters with the tower.
Here some nice views appeared.
The surrounding low areas of the dunes were former sea bed. At some point, the supply from the sea was cut off and eventually, the remaining lakes were overgrown. All that is left today is the bog, the brown are you can see.
Here you can see the sea on the other side.
It was a nice location to have a walk through the bog and visit the tower. I would go back there in the summer whenever in the area again.
