At the playground in Kadriorg park, waiting for time to pass.

Today we take the ferry back to Stockholm. The drive from Tartu (where we stay) to Tallinn (which has all the connections to the rest of the world) is over 2 hours, plus city traffic in Tallinn, plus a lunch break of uncertain length, so I aim to arrive an hour before we really want to be at the ferry terminal.

Kadriorg is a large beautiful park very near the harbour and it’s become a tradition to kill that extra hour there. (Well, except for one year when we got stuck in a traffic jam due to a bike race in Tallinn and used up the hour, which is why we have it.)

We went for a walk in another bog, with my father and his wife (on the Riisa hiking trail in Soomaa bog).

The path passed right by several small pools with platforms that made it easy to climb into and out of the water, so we tried out the water.

Bog pool water is brown like Coca-Cola.

Given how small the pools were I had expected them to be warm from the sun, but the water was quite shockingly cold. Only a very thin layer at the top was warm. If I swam very carefully, almost gliding without moving my arms, I could keep in the warm layer. But then I turned back and swam through water that I had churned up with my legs, and it was cold again.

No trip to Estonia is complete without a visit to one of the adventure parks with their treetop obstacle courses. This year Adrian joined us, and had more fun and got further than I had really dared to hope for. Ingrid on the other hand was super disappointed that she didn’t make the length limit for half of the tracks.

Taevaskoda, “Heaven’s Hall”, one of the most scenic spots in Estonia with sandstone cliffs next to a winding river. Do the kids spend any time appreciating the view? No. They found a Pokestop.

Two views from the top of Estonia’s tallest “mountain”, Suur Munamägi. The name could be translated as Great Egg Mountain but it is neither particularly great nor really a mountain, more of a Big Egg Hill. It is all of 318 metres high, but only 60 metres relative to the land around it, and even those 60 are a really gentle slope. (It is called the Big Egg Hill because there is also a Little Egg Hill.)

We happened to be nearby so we drove there and climbed all those 60 metres to its top. The viewing tower adds another 30 metres so you can at least see past all the tree tops. Not that the view is particularly exciting, anyway.

It was more fun looking straight down. There was a cross-country cycling competition going on while we there and the route passed right across the top of the hill. In a way it should be kind of impressive for the race to pass the top of the country’s highest mountain but I am pretty sure that the cyclists had much tougher and steeper sections elsewhere.

We went for a bog/forest walk with our Estonian friends, in Meenikunno bog.

I wanted to take the kids to somewhere typically Estonian. We’ve seen enough forests in Sweden, but there are no bogs around Stockholm.

The first half of the walk went through a bog along a plank path. In the forest it was an ordinary path on the ground. The ground was waterlogged so funnily enough we got through the bog with completely dry feet but got them rather wet and muddy in the forest.

Everywhere in Estonia there are small locally-grown cucumbers for sale. The kids eat them like fruit, instead of apples or bananas.

We’re in Tartu. After a day of driving, grocery shopping and unpacking, I needed some fresh air in the evening. By turning the walk into a geocaching walk, I got Adrian to join me. It was a good thing I had him with me – one of the caches was so high up in a tree that I couldn’t have done it on my own, but with him on my shoulders we were able to reach it.

The second cache was hidden next to a decrepit old house. To my eyes it was picturesque decay; to Adrian it looked so old that he was afraid to go near it in case it fell down.

We’re staying in an apartment in Tigutorn, “the snail tower”. The convenient location is good, but even nicer is the parking spot that’s included in the deal! Last year I spent so much mental energy daily on finding a place for the car. It’s nice to not have to think about it at all.

On our way down from Villeplane, at one point the road filled with sheep – hundreds and hundreds of them. We were glad that we were driving against their flow and not behind them.

For our last day in Mercantour we drove to Col de la Cayolle, a high mountain pass, for a grand finale. Vast views, flowering meadows, turquoise lakes, you name it!

This pass was higher up than the area around Villeplane where we had been walking until now, so the landscape looked quite different and everyone walked with extra energy. There were no trees here, only grass and a few low shrubs, and bare rocks in many areas.

And marmots. When we saw the first one we were all excited and crowded each other to get a glimpse. By the time we had our fifth (or whatever) marmot encounter, it felt rather ordinary.

The notes for this walk said it would be 12 km which we judged to be definitely too much for the kids, especially since a few walks have turned out to be longer in reality than on paper. But for once the numbers seemed to be too high. When we had walked about a third of the way and looked at the time, we decided that we would be able to do all of it, especially since the 2nd half was generally gently downhill.

Which was all very good, except we had gotten a late start (letting Adrian sleep in so he’d be well rested for our long hike) so we got caught out by an afternoon thunderstorm on our way down. First some rain, then a pause, then some more rain, then thunder and a torrential downpour mixed with hailstones as large as the tip of my little finger. Luckily the actual thunder and lightning was clearly and definitely on the other side of the mountain so we didn’t have to worry about getting hit. But we had hail hitting us so hard that it actually hurt even through a rain coat; so much rain and hail that we were wading through deep icy puddles towards the end. And that continued for roughly an hour I believe.

That whole last section is a blur in my memories; I remember green views and paths that resembled piles of kids’ building blocks, which I would really have enjoyed otherwise. But mostly I just remember all of us running to get back to the car as fast as possible; in the end I was running while carrying Adrian to protect him from the hail. Fortunately the path was stable and not slippery so nobody fell, but we all got very wet. Yet another one of those experiences that was pretty miserable while we experienced it, but that we can afterwards remember as a bit of an adventure.

A thunderstorm is approaching