Estonia's Western Islands

The drive to Virtsu is unhurried — pine forest, juniper meadows, occasional storks on chimney pots. The ferry is part of the day's pace; you can stand on the deck the whole way and watch the eider ducks. By the time we land on Muhu the air smells different. Kuressaare's old harbour is about ten minutes from your windmill; we walk it before dinner so the light works in our favour.

The castle is a serious building — convertible drawbridges, a fully preserved chapel, and a moat that still holds water. The Kaali craters are uncanny: nine impact pits in a small farmland, the largest a near-perfect circle of dark groundwater that the Vikings called the eye of the sun. Sõrve is a long thin peninsula running south; the lighthouse is one of the most photographed buildings in Estonia and yet rarely crowded.

Hiiumaa is half the population density of Saaremaa and a quarter that of the mainland. The forests are thicker, the villages quieter, the roads emptier. Kõpu has been guiding ships since 1531; the current tower is the third on the same foundations. Our keeper, Mati, is a third-generation Hiiumaan whose grandfather kept the light through the war. The cottage is two-bedroom with a small kitchen and a stove.

Tahkuna is a long pale-sand beach with a memorial to the Estonia ferry tragedy of 1994 — a quiet bell that rings at 01:48, the moment the ship sank. The beach itself is 3 km of empty white sand. Pühalepa church is one of the oldest wooden churches in Estonia and surprisingly small inside. The smokehouse dinner is genuinely the working harbour's cookhouse — perch, eel, and zander straight from the morning catch.