Longer post coming here.
Recently I went the need to take on a longer hiking trail and for this I used the Alltrails app which is good to discover trails that others have walked on and recorded. I found one trail about 20 minutes drive away from the capital of Estonia, that should be 12.5km long on the fields and forests. Well, it turned out to be not so fun and almost non-accessible, I still tried...
The starting point was next to Üksnurme manor. Right when I arrived I noticed the problem... Where the trail should be, well there was none, it was massively overgrown.
I walked to the other side of the manor and found a path in the grass that led somewhere. Still overgrown but at least walkable. I knew that it's probably tick infested but decided to go anyway since I already was there.
Having walked over the field I merged with the original trail. It seemed like someone has walked there because there was a narrow path present.
I wasn't happy with the conditions cause the trail was barely there but I found a small bridge. A good indication that its at least meant to be as a geniuine trail, I procceeded...
After about 500 meters I had to turn right, on the sattellite picture where the trail went it seemed good but the reality was horrible. There was an underwood, it seemed the after that there is a good trail so I tried to push through but my view was this on a photo below... I canceled this spot and found a walkaround, still bad but better.
A cutout through a fallen tree, indicating a trail.
Time to walk through the forest. No clear trail but it was better at least due to shorter vegetation. That went on about a kilometer and a half.
Then about 1km of mud trail.
Soon I merged with a gravel road, it was so good to walk. I checked myself if I find any ticks on me, I kind of have a slight phobia of those sickness spreading useless insects.
A beautiful view of a river next to the gravel road.
When I entered the forested part I made a bit of noise and heard a big animal running away, that starteled me a lot actually. I dont know what animal, I didnt see through a thick forest but it was large. I heard a big branch breakingand lots of rustling and this can only be done by a heavy one. There are two possibilities. A bear or a moose. Since there are not a lot of moose in this area to my knowledge then its more possible that it might have been a bear. Pretty scary actually but fortunately most of the bears here are not aggressive.
The map showed me to veer off the gravel road onte the field and next to river which should be beautiful.
In my mind I was like, ahhh here we go again but there semed to be a small trail and the vegetation is not that bad. Well, not yet at least...
It quickly got a lot worse.
To the point where I was like to hell with this! Im not going to walk it further. I was almost a neck deep in the weeds, its not fun at all.
I backtracked my steps and skipped this section to reach the campfire place through the gravel road. It was a really nice spot to be at, just next to the river.
The trail went on next to the river but again, it seemed to be overgrown. I thought for a while if I should take it and still decided to go because it didnt seem that bad at this point.
Well, I was so wrong... It got bad again and also a lot of nettles.
Yeah, to hell with this! I backtracked my steps AGAIN and went back on the gravel road.
I decided to skip the original trail alltogether because I was fed up with walking on an overgrown trail and collecting ticks. I skipped a lot of parts that should have been beautiful along the river, just because it was not worth it.
Soon I merged with blacktop road in a village named Metsanurme. I walked a couple of kilometers there. It was a really quiet village. Nice to see such places while walking there.
Soon I turned back to the gravel road to start walking towards the spot where I started from. I still had about 3.5km to go.
Read a bit of history and you can also see a village swing. We have many of these everywhere here in Estonia. In my opinion these are quite a lethal swings haha.
Some beautiful countryside/field views on my way back.
In total I walked a little over 10km. Overall, I did not enjoy the hike. Beautiful sceneries all around but the paths were not clear and so overgrown that it made in not good for an enjoyable hike. I guess its only good to make this hike earlier in the spring when weeds have not started growing yet.
I found 3 ticks on my pants because I did a through search before I sat in the car. I might go back at some point in time but only in early spring like I mentioned.
