100 stories from the hiking route

1992 – confusion with a forest block post or “doroga sto sorok vosem”

Information

Topic

People and nature

Coordinates

Long-Lat WGS 84

Latitude: 57.596725

Longitude: 26.431931

L-EST 97

x: 6386454.5
y: 645403.7

Location

Ähijärve-Aegviidu Hiking route

The Estonian state forest is divided into rectangles or blocks. This distribution originates from the era of manors, as dividing forests into blocks made it easier to keep accounts on and manage the forests. Posts indicating the location and number of the blocks were installed in the intersections of the rides. The side of the block post with a number was aimed towards the block with a matching number.
Hikers and people picking berries and mushrooms sometimes use the block posts to find their way around in the forest. A story is known from the Tõrvase area from the early 1990s: people used to take the bus from Valga to the state forest in order to make extra money by picking berries. The berry pickers from Valga also used the block posts to find their way around the forest, believing them to show the road numbers, as all the block rides could be travelled by car. A meeting at the post “doroga sto sorok vosem” (Russian for “Road 148”) was arranged without the people involved realising that posts with the same numbers would be on four corners of the blocks. Thus, it happened that a berry picker waited in one and the bus in another corner of the block. In the end, the berry-picker had no other choice but to spend the night in the forest.

Source:  
RMK heritage culture objects database