I have been there, under the Türisalu coastal cliff before, but one evening, in June, I decided I wanted to go back there. To enjoy the beach and see what's changed. The thing about sea coasts is that they are always evolving. Over several years, the storms change the landscape, erode the rocks and break down cliffs, so often the coastline looks different from what it was before. Türisalu cliff is located on the northern Estonian coast and is about 40 meters high.
My walk began from Vääna beach, which is a beautiful sandy beach where many go to swim and sunbathe in the summer. It's also great for just a short evening walk.
I made my way to the western direction from vääna beach, along the sandy shores.
This is where the Vääna beach ends. You can see that the landscape rises along the coastline, it's getting gradually higher until it's this 40m tall Türisalu cliff.
Really a beautiful area to walk.
After a short while of walking on the beach, the cliff comes into view, right next to the water.
Here you can see how the limestone slabs have fallen down from the cliff in the past. This has probably happened a long time ago because there are trees growing on the bank. If it happened recently there then the trees would have been destroyed.
The lower part of the cliff has a lot of small tunnels and holes. During storms, the waves hit the cliff and erode these crevasses in the rock that I believe to be the sandstone. Looks pretty cool, really.
Mostly, this cliff consists of limestone and layers can often be seen. All this area used to be a seafloor in ancient history, so a lot of organic materials decayed there and formed the limestone we have there today.
This is the part where I had to start climbing over the rocks that had fallen down from the cliff. All these big slabs of limestone. This is not all recent falls. If you look closely, then you can see that the edges of the rocks are rounded. Which means it has seen sea water erosion, which means these slabs have been there for a while.
Now, this part of the rock up there will fall down in the near future. The lower layers have fallen away, and there is not much that supports this. I think, in the next 5 years, there is a big chance that it will no longer be there. Hopefully, no one is under at the beach when the time comes. It will flatten you.
Having walked around the corner, I saw a lot of swans in the water.
And A LOT more of them as I walked further.
Here you can see part of the cliff that will also fall down sooner or later.
A view back at where I came from. Beautiful but dangerous. Some of the rocks looked not that old and probably fell down quite recently.
I sat down on the beach and enjoyed the sea views and light breeze. Very regularly, I could hear small rocks falling down from the cliff. I mean, as small as your fingertip. There were spots where I could see where these rocks fall and have been piled into small rock piles. I don't have a photo of this, but these rocks fell after every 30 seconds to 1 minute, made me feel a bit on edge, but nothing too bad😅.
Trees, a root layer, a bit of dirt, and limestone.
Having spent a good while at the beach, it was time for me to start going back the same way I came from. On my way back, I took a shot of these rock piles that people have compiled into small towers.
It was a really cool hike. A bit dangerous and the chance of being flattened definitely exists. But it's rather very unlikely that I'm there exactly when a big boulder decides to fall down. Otherwise, it's an extremely beautiful spot to photograph and chillax a bit.
