Detour #155: Barging across the Baltic, Estonia
Photo Ben Coombs
Ben Coombs took a Jaguar XJ6 for a chilling trip across the frozen Baltic Sea, and suggests you to do likewise. Why? Well, why not...
Every winter, as temperatures plummet to 30 below zero, large swathes of the Baltic relinquish their liquid state and freeze, forming vast ice sheets off the coasts of Estonia, Russia, Finland and Sweden. Where the ice freezes thick and hard enough, it is able to support the weight of a car, and industrious locals build ice roads across the sea to access islands offshore.
Doesn’t that sound like a rather compelling excuse for a road trip? For anyone fond of motoring’s more esoteric side, the prospect of driving across a frozen sea seems rather unmissable, doesn’t it? And what’s more, it also offers an excuse for a car purchase – in my case, a rather charming, early ‘90s Jaguar XJ6. Because when you’re relying on a car to get you from the UK to Estonia, and then across a corner of the Baltic Sea, surely there can be few more compelling options than an old Jag, purchased for £900 a few weeks before the trip and fitted with winter tyres ready for the adventure.
Estonia’s ice roads only open when the ice reaches a thickness of 20cm, and so to give me the best chance of finding open ice roads, I planned to get to Estonia at the coldest time of the year – mid February. However, with one week to go before HMS Jag left the UK, none of the ice was thick enough to support its ample weight, and hence all the potential sea-passages were shut. Luckily a couple of days before the Jag left for the Baltic, a late freeze sent the ice into overdrive and in the nick of time, my dream of driving on a frozen sea became viable.
The ice roads in Estonia are operated by the transport authorities, who restrict access to them when conditions are marginal. At the time of my trip, only two ice roads had been opened – a 10.2km route across the sea ice to the island of Vormsi, and a shorter one from Haapsalu to the Noarootsi peninsula - a far cry from the coldest winters, when all six of the possible ice roads are in condition, with the longest stretching up to 25km across the Baltic. I headed for the longest available ice road first, attached a Union Jack to the back of the HMS Jag, and was soon driving along a track of compacted snow as the shoreline passed unseen beneath me.
The Ice roads have a rather esoteric highway code – no seatbelts, no vehicles over 2.5 tonnes, no stopping and no cruising at between 30 & 45km/h. After firing up a stirring rendition of ‘Rule Britannia’ on the stereo, I accelerated up to a comfortable 70km/h cruise and wafted across the sea, a ferry slowly plying its channel in the ice a few hundred metres to my left.
There was no unusual sensation which accompanied driving on the frozen sea ice, nothing to differentiate the experience from driving on a frozen backroad, other than the constant niggling thought that there was less than a foot of ice keeping two tonnes of car and the Baltic a safe distance apart.
Soon I wafted up onto the shores of the island of Vormsi, having put an 11km sea crossing behind me. Quickly realising that out of season there’s not a huge amount to do on said island, I promptly spun the Jag around and headed back across the Ice, beating the ferry back to the mainland by about 90 seconds.
After a bite to eat, I headed over to the second available ice road. Shorter but more twisty, it offered a similar experience, but with the bonus that the corners provided an opportunity to have some fun with the rear wheel drive Jag, drifting it like a rally car on the low-friction surface – oversteer on the Baltic Sea was, quite frankly, a box which needed ticking.
So in total, my drive to Estonia resulted in somewhere less than 30km of driving on ice roads. So was this a poor return on the effort of getting there from the UK? Definitely not. Life is all about experiences, and as a petrolhead, seeking out the more unusual experiences one can have behind the wheel is an end in itself, and the goal of driving the ice roads provided the perfect excuse for another adventure – the drive to the Baltic and back. Was it worth it? Totally.
If you’d like to sample Estonia’s Ice Roads, check out the Estonian Tourism page, which gives an overview of the subject.
