Saaremaa and the Estonian islands, the Baltic at its quietest

Estonia's coastline is a ragged one, and off its western shore the sea is scattered with islands, more than two thousand of them, most of them tiny. The largest are Saaremaa and its neighbour Muhu, joined by a causeway, and Hiiumaa to the north. They are places of low, flat land, pine and juniper, stone walls, thatched farmhouses and windmills, surrounded by a shallow, often still sea. Under the Soviet Union, the islands were a closed border zone and largely cut off; today they are where Estonians go for summer holidays, and they remain among the quietest corners of Europe.

Muhu, the gateway

Most visitors reach Saaremaa by ferry from the mainland to Muhu, and then cross the causeway. Muhu is small and rural, known for its traditional villages and its distinctive folk costume, embroidered in bright colours, which you may still see worn on festival days. Koguva, on the island's western tip, is a village of old thatched farmhouses and stone walls preserved as an open-air museum.

Saaremaa

Saaremaa is the largest island in Estonia, a place of farms, forests and small villages. Its emblem is the windmill, and the row of wooden windmills at Angla, with their white sails and wooden bodies, is one of the best-known sights in the country. Its juniper is the other: the island's heaths are covered in it, and its wood is used for everything from butter knives to beer.

Kuressaare, the island's only town, is a small, pleasant spa resort with a remarkable castle. The town grew up as a spa in the nineteenth century, when visitors came for its curative mud, and several of its sanatoria still offer treatments today. The Bishop's Castle, built in the fourteenth century by the bishops who ruled the island, is the best-preserved medieval castle in the Baltic states, a square stone fortress with a tall watchtower, surrounded by a moat and bastions.

The island's strangest sight is near the village of Kaali, where a meteorite struck several thousand years ago, leaving a group of craters. The largest is a perfectly round lake, about a hundred metres across, surrounded by a bank of earth and trees. It is thought to have been a sacred site in ancient times, and the impact may have left traces in Baltic and Finnish legend.

Hiiumaa, the second largest island, lies to the north and is quieter still, a place of forests, sandy shores and lighthouses. The lighthouse at Kõpu, on a hill near the island's western tip, is one of the oldest in the world still in use. It was finished in 1531 as an unlit tower, a daymark to warn ships off the dangerous shoals offshore, and only later given a light.

The mainland coast

On the north coast of the mainland, east of Tallinn, Lahemaa National Park was the first national park in the Soviet Union, founded in 1971. It is a landscape of forest, bog and rocky shore, scattered with huge granite boulders left by retreating glaciers, and of old fishing villages and manor houses, such as Altja, a village of wooden houses with an old inn. Its bogs, crossed on wooden boardwalks, are especially fine in early morning, when the mist hangs over the pools.

The tours

Explore Worldwide's Historic Baltic Republics, fourteen nights, includes the islands in a full journey through all three countries. It starts in Tallinn, crosses to Muhu and Saaremaa, with Kuressaare, then continues to Pärnu, Tartu, Riga and the Gauja National Park, with Cēsis and Turaida, Rundāle Palace and the Hill of Crosses. It runs from May to September.

Explore's Walk Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, seven nights, covers the region on foot. It walks in Lahemaa National Park and at Altja, at Viljandi, in the Gauja National Park, with Eagle's Cliff and Sigulda, and in Kemeri National Park and at the seaside resort of Jūrmala, before reaching Klaipėda on the Lithuanian coast. It runs in May, June, July and September.

The islands are at their best from late May to August, when the days are long and the evenings seem to go on for ever. Midsummer, celebrated in Estonia on St John's Eve with bonfires, is the high point of the year. In autumn the islands empty and the light turns golden on the juniper.