Karula National Park

Karula is what the last ice sheet left behind: a field of small rounded moraine hills with lakes in the hollows between them, packed into the smallest of Estonia's national parks. There are some forty lakes inside its boundary, and the landscape changes every few hundred metres in a way the rest of the country does not.

What you actually see

• Short steep hills - a hummocky moraine landscape under mixed forest.
• Meadows and working farms - hay meadows and traditional farms still worked inside the park, with the old field patterns part of what is protected.
• The lakes - from ponds up to Ähijärv, the largest, with the visitor centre on its shore.
• Rebasemõisa tower - the one wide view over the whole landscape, at the end of short loop trails.

When to go

June to August is for swimming in the lakes, meadows in flower and dry trails. Late September puts the moraine landscape under autumn colour, which is the best it looks all year. Winter gives ski tracks between the hills and very few people.

Honest expectations

Small means small: this is a park for a day of walking, not a multi-day destination, and the hills are modest by any standard outside Estonia.

It is also remote. Public transport is thin, roads inside the park are gravel, and there is little in the way of services beyond the visitor centre.

Nearby

The Haanja uplands and Suur Munamägi are about forty minutes east. Valga on the Latvian border is a similar distance west.