Käsmu

Käsmu had a navigation school and, at its height, more sea captains per household than anywhere else in the Russian Empire - hence the name the captains' village. During the Soviet period it sat inside the closed border zone, which froze it in place. The wooden houses along the shore are still there, and so is the peninsula behind them.

What you actually see

A single street of nineteenth-century captains' houses facing the bay, with the small maritime museum in one of them - an idiosyncratic private collection of instruments, models and salvage rather than a formal institution.

Behind the village a trail loops around the peninsula through pine forest, past Käsmu lake and out to a shoreline dense with erratic boulders. Some are the size of small buildings, dropped here by the ice and left standing in the shallows.

When to go

• June to September - the trail is dry and the sea is swimmable, just.
• Winter - snow on the boulder field and pack ice at the shore, which is the strongest version of the place.
• Autumn - storms driving into the bay, and the village empty.

Honest expectations

The peninsula loop is around ten kilometres. It is flat but sandy and rooty in places, and it takes longer than the distance suggests.

The village itself is small and quiet, with limited places to eat and no supermarket. This is not somewhere to arrive hungry.

Nearby

Altja and its fishing-village buildings are along the coast east. Palmse manor and Viru bog are both inside the same national park.