Exploring the Tori Hell Cliffside and Caves

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greddyforce7 days agoPeakD4 min read

On our summer travels with some friends, on our final day we had an interesting spot to check out. This is called a Tori Hell. It's located in a village of Tori, in south-western Estonia.
Basically it's a 500-meter long inland cliffside, next to a river. In the cliff there are numerous caves that I was able to take a look inside.

Im pretty sure that I had been there before. It was probably a long time ago, but the place felt a bit familiar for some reason. Even if I did, I have no photos of this time. Now, I made this problem of having no photos go away.

On the photo above, you can see a staircase leading down the cliff. It didn't always look like that. The spot where you can see a staircase in a crevasse, it used to be a cave over 100 years ago. Reportedly about 31 meters long. It collapsed in 1908.

Here Is a photo I managed to find of the same place, but it was taken on a river, towards the mouth of the cave. Sometime before 1908.

There is about 1km long trail that we were able to take. Walking the underside of the cliff next to the river and then upper cliff where there is a cemetery on the edge.

Right on the staircase, you can see an entrance to one of the caves.

This is the view down below, inside the cave. It does not go far at all.

All the cliffside is made of sandstone that is really soft and easy to scratch. This has resulted of many people scratching their names inside the sandstone. Literally almost all of the cliff is scratched full of names. Not sure how I feel about it. I think it would have been best to leave the cliff as it was.
If you look at the very old photo I shared above. Even on there you can see that people carved their names even then.

Would you scratch your name on this cliff?

Here are the views next to the river of this cliff ridge.

Here is another cave entrance, almost fully hidden behind the foliage on the cliffside. This cave was wider than the previous one. Looks really cool from the outside.

The caves have been carved by springwater, that comes out from underground and flows into the river. Of course, this process took many centuries to carve out those caves like they appear today.

More small holes in the cliff.

Here is one resilient brich tree which decided to start growing on the side of the cliff. I mean, if I was a birch tree, I would choose another spot for better nutrient rich lifestyle, but it looks very healthy oddly enough.

A view to the river from below.

Right there we took another set of stairs and climbed up the cliff again. I didn't take much photos up there because there really wasn't anything new to take shots of. Still, I had to take one more of the river view a bit higher up now.

Back in the parking lot I took this one of the Tori church. I thought it looks pretty scenic in this spot where it's located and with those nicely trimmed trees.

Tori Hell is definitely a spectacular spot to see and explore. At least now I know in the future, that I have been there, because I have a photographic evidence of the occasion lol.