Estonia’s Tentative List isn’t exactly a cause for excitement, and an entry just called “Wooded meadows” sounds even less appealing than “Baltic Klint”. Still, these wooded meadows are a typical feature of Northern Europe (it was a common land practice during the Middle Ages), and Estonia is one of the last places where farmers still use them. It is proposed as a mixed site and a cultural landscape. The natural part comprises the wooded areas, and the local farmers added the “meadows” to it: they mow them or let their animals graze there between the trees. By clearing the undergrowth, the trees grow tall but stand quite far apart. Hay, wood, nuts and fruits are harvested. The farmers must continually maintain this to keep the meadows intact and prevent the forest from reclaiming them (it reportedly takes 5-10 years for a meadow to fully disappear).

The Tentative Site description lists 8 places all around Estonia where you can see Wooded meadows. I went to the Halliste wooded meadow, known on maps as Tõramaa wooded meadow. It’s quite a drive into a sparsely inhabited and forested region, and the last part of the road isn’t even paved. It lies in Soomaa National Park, a former TWHS, which wanted to major in peat, but the Estonians wisely gave up on that idea.

Tõramaa is an established site with a picnic spot and a viewing platform, and also the departure point for a hiking trail. Well, the hiking wasn't going to happen for me: as I had already read online, the area had been underwater for much of the year and the grazing animals had taken shelter at the camping site. It was still muddy and I could not see anything resembling a trail, so I just climbed the watchtower - a sturdy one this time. It did provide good, iconic views of the Wooded meadows with the bundles of hay lying around.

As I was done with it in 10 minutes, I drove on for another kilometer or so to the start of a different hike in Soomaa NP: the Beaver Trail. This is a short boardwalk through the floodplain forest, offering "trees gnawed by beavers and a lot of mosquitoes" (according to the sign at the entrance). It was a pleasant hike, except for those nasty bugs, indeed, which attacked me every second I paused on the trail. So no chance waiting it out to see a beaver show up in the river.

Towards the end of the walk, you will pass another Wooded meadow: this is an overgrown one, gone back wild after farming in the area stopped.