Back in July, when I went camping, I woke up the next day and wanted to have a walk on the coast to see this area a bit more. I was on the Pakri peninsula, in Northern Estonia. I have been on this peninsula many times, but I had never been in this part before, so it sure was interesting.
I went to the beach to have a short walk along the coastline, it turned out to be a much longer walk than anicipated.
When I arrived at the beach, I quickly noticed the different appearance of this beach. A rock plateau everywhere, this is not how our beaches usually look like. It reminded me of one place a lot... Iceland! There I could see something similar, but the rock itself is totally different.
What you can see here are sheets of limestone. This is an Estonian bedrock and is found in many places. It just doesn't usually look like this on the beaches.
You can also notice a very thick fog. I loved it! Everywhere looked so mysterious. The seawater was warm, and a cooler air mass came in from the sea. This made the sea "steam" a lot. The fog was only on the coast, about a kilometer inland, there was a clear sky.
Such a cool coastline and fog, of course, I wanted to walk longer on the coast. The fog was thick, but also some sunshine was able to penetrate this thick mass. This created very interesting lighting conditions.
So many different shades of colors on the limestone. Again, I did see similar patterns in Iceland, but there, all the rock is of volcanic origin. In this photo, the reddish hues are oxidized iron deposits.
At times, my visibility was only 50 meters in every direction, I couldn't see any further because of it.
Limestone here in this beach looks like that because it has not been exposed in the open very long. The sea has eroded it out from underground. Every time the sea level or waves are higher, it erodes the limestone more and more. The smoother it looks, the more it has been eroded over time. At some point, this rock will be fully made to dust by the sea action.
This is interesting. A lot of thin-layered rock there. To me, it seems like a mix of clay and sandstone. A lot of time ago, the sediments got collected there in layers, most likely by water. This has been buried and pressurized. Now this rock gets exposed by the sea and is getting destroyed, so all the layers are visible like this.
It doesn't seem to be a popular spot for people to walk or be at. I didn't see any footsteps in these parts of the beach. I went along the shoreline for quite a while. Some spots were wet and bushy, so I struggled a bit to cross these, but I managed.
Here you can see that the rocky beach suddenly turns to sandy beach. This is where I got off the beach and into the forest to find my way back to where I started from.
These forests were insanely infested by mosquitoes. In places, I couldn't stand still because I got stung 10 times if I stood still for 5 seconds. Thank god that malaria is not a thing in Estonia.
Hope you liked my short adventure at this interesting beach. I sure did!
This post has been shared on Reddit by @bilgin70 through the HivePosh initiative.
Mosquitoes can be really unbearable sometimes. They especially disturb my sleep during the summer months. Despite everything, you had a great time. You have to look on the bright side. :))
Extremely disturbing. I guess this is the only downside of the summer haha.
This looks like the kind of place that might have a fossil or two on those layers of limestone. Very cool.
Limestone has a ton of fossils in it. Considering it was a seafloor at some point in time. When looking at the limestone closely, finding those is very likely!
Thanks to the disinterest of Malaria to Estonia, she brought this narrative of yours about the coast of Pakri peninsula. The rock formations and different types of rocks looks interesting in the coast and that must be amazing to witness personally. You can see the years of pressure and formation on these rocks, that would be almost disappearing soon. The transition to rocky area to a bit of sand is awesome, like it was another coast in Estonia. Is the beach there safe with all of that fogs and eerie weather?
Fog does not make it more dangerous in any way. Maybe only a storm when the waves are high. Then the water can sweep you off.
Oh then that must be warned if ever. But the real danger here must be the mosquitoes of the area.
I see mosquitoes as just very bothersome. They do not spread illnesses here.
It's good that you photographed these rocks since they're destined to disappear in the future. I saw similar rock slabs on a beach in Croatia, but probably made of a different type of rock.
Beautiful light!
Probably another rock, yeah. Limestone is made of organic matter. Estonia used to be a tropical seafloor in ancient history. I'm not sure if Croatia was underwater.
I don't know either, but rocky beaches are common there. And the ones I've seen look similar, but they're probably of a completely different origin than the ones you have.
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