Palmse is a manor, not a village, and the estate is the reason people come. The Palmse Manor was the seat of the von der Pahlen family, Baltic German nobles who held it from the late seventeenth century until the Estonian land reform of 1919, and the main house, a long, pale baroque building with a red roof, was built in the eighteenth century. The grounds include a park, a pond with a bridge, a distillery now turned into a pub, and a string of outbuildings that give the estate its sense of being a small working world. It stands in the heart of Lahemaa National Park, in northern Estonia, forty or so kilometres from the Gulf of Finland's coast.
Lahemaa, founded in 1971, was the first national park in the Soviet Union, and it protects a mixture of coastal forest, bogs, rivers and fishing villages. Pine and spruce cover most of the land, and the bogs, such as Viru, can be crossed by boardwalks that lead over a landscape of dwarf pines, cranberries and small dark pools. Big granite boulders, left by the ice, lie scattered along the coast and in the forest, among them the Majakivi, one of the largest in Estonia. Elk, brown bears and lynx live here, though you are unlikely to see them.
The roads in the park are quiet and pleasant, with a mix of paved and gravel surfaces, and the pace is gentle. The Coastal Road passes through villages such as Altja, with its fishermen's huts and wooden swings, and Käsmu, a former sea captains' village with a maritime museum. Estonia's other manors, such as Sagadi and Vihula, are nearby and worth a visit. Be careful on gravel, particularly after rain, and watch for deer and elk at dusk, since collisions are a real hazard.
The manor has a café and a restaurant serving Estonian food, such as black bread, smoked fish and rhubarb pie, and a sauna, in the Estonian style, is available in many guesthouses. Summer evenings last until late, with a pale, silvery light that seems to hang over the forest. Mosquitoes and ticks are common in summer, so use repellent and check yourself after walks.