Probably the best walk ever!
Victoria adds: Seglinge may well be the friendliest island in the world. They go to no end of trouble to make their visitors happy, and not for any economic benefit since there are no cafes or restaurants or souvenir shops on the island to benefit from tourists taking up the suggested activities. There is, for instance, a lovely little lake you can swim in – warmer than the sea and protected from the wind by trees – with a jetty for diving off and a little wooden changing area. Wolfgang took advantage of it before we set off on the walk proper. As he hadn’t brought either a towel or swimming things, it had to be a skinny dip. I don’t know why he didn’t use the photo I took of him as an illustration, but never mind, at least you can see the jetty.
You get these charming little coloured maps for free when you arrive. Our walk was the circular one around Öjen. According to the harbour master, it’s 9km; according to the map, it appears to be about 3km; to the distinctly unfit sailors who walked it yesterday, it felt like about 10km.
The jetty in the lake, minus any naked Wolfgang. Sorry about that.
The pride and care the Seglinger lavish on their island is evident in their extremely detailed midsommarstång. Seglinge is part of a kommun (administrative unit) consisting of four major islands. The map available at the harbour office carefully lists for each of them the location of the midsommarstång. Indeed one of the islands, Björkö, has nothing on it worth marking except the midsommarstång and the recycling point. We’ll probably be giving Björkö a miss….
The walk proper started near this windmill.
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After the pancakesque geography of Estonia, Seglinge felt positively mountainous. The rocks and the heather and the juniper bushes, which look a little bit like gorse, inspired Wolfgang to see himself as Alan Breck, and he addressed me as “David” for the rockiest bits (“Well, David, you’re no very gleg at the jumping!”). The path was amazingly well maintained and took us through forest and meadows and Scottish bits, guided by a plentiful supply of white-painted rocks. Where there were no rocks, there were white-painted crosses, until at last we reached the sea. Here the Keep Seglinge Beautiful Committee turned whimsical. Suddenly the white sploshes vanished, and with no prior warning we found ourselves having to play hunt the seagull to find the correct direction. It was actually enormous fun, even if we did go the wrong way at one point and found ourselves on top of a peak surmounted by what we had thought was a viewing point but turned out to be the remains of an elderly wooden navigational aid.
Can you spot the seagull?
The seagulls were also beautifully maintained. They must take them down in the autumn and repaint them. Every so often, the waymarker wouldn’t be a seagull but a goose or a fish or whatever had taken the Committee’s fancy. In the wooded bits, there were wooden eggs dangling from trees. But mostly it was seagulls.
This one was easy to spot!
At the end of the walk is a sign to the village and two chairs, where the weary walkers can rest their legs and finish off their water. We didn’t sit for long, though, as there were horseflies galore – it’s a shame Felicity and Joshua had already left, so there was no sweeter flesh to attract them away from us. You will be relieved to know, I’m sure, that we nonetheless made it home unbitten.
