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Corsica
By Angus Watson
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The ancient Greeks called Corsica Kallisté, meaning “the most beautiful”.
Touring Corsica by car for two weeks, my girlfriend Mary and I discovered that: “the most free of Brits, the best food, the angriest locals AND the most beautiful” might have been a more fitting moniker.
The French-owned island of Corsica is less than half the size of Wales, yet the mountainous interior soars to well over twice the height of Wales’ highest peak, creating a sublimely dramatic landscape. Gigantic, bare rock mountains jut arrogantly skyward. In breathtakingly delicate small-scale contrast, vertiginous peaks and ridges are draped with lovely wooded valleys and gambolling streams. Where tortuously twisted cliffs meet the sea they plunge into the clear Mediterranean.
It was Mary’s and my first holiday together, and it was a compromise. I’d argued for two weeks’ backpacking, hill-walking, snorkelling, castle-ogling and animal spotting in a country that most people haven’t heard of, where it’s a question of when you get diarrhoea. Mary wanted two weeks in a country without a noticeable stray dog population, at a clean hotel with great food, a warm pool and state-of-the-art sun loungers.
So the driving tour of Corsica was our compromise. Backpacks were replaced by car, and spontaneity was replaced by booking five hotels in advance (covering the entire stay).
Secretly, I’d got a good deal. A, I’d always wanted to go to Corsica after seeing how beautiful it was in Asterix in Corsica. B, we had three days booked in a hotel where there was nothing to do but walk in the mountains. C, everywhere other hotel was by the sea and I have my own mask, snorkel and flippers. And D, I’m not averse to a day or two on a sun lounger.
We collected our Renault Twingo from Calvi airport in the North West. That was the furthest of Corsica’s three airports from our first destination, Porto Vecchio in the south east, but Corsica is small enough that you can fly to the cheapest airport and drive wherever.
The tinny little Twingo, with its short bonnet and big windows, felt more like a chairlift than a car. Since we spent many of our days on mountain roads, grinding up and swooping down scenery gorgeous enough to make a gansta rapper weep, that suited us just fine.
On that first, typically mind-bogglingly lovely drive from Calvi to Porto Vecchio, we had a smart lunch in a restaurant on stilts outside the old Roman capital of Aleria. We ate fish at a table perched over the sea, all the while throwing bread to hungry fish teeming in the sea below. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
As afternoon cooled, we rolled into Porto Vecchio. Like most Corsican towns, the centre of Porto Vecchio is a medieval walled citadel. All over Corsica the large-bricked, slightly crumbling fortifications are legacy of the Genoese, who held the island for 500 years until 1768. As well as the citadels in the major towns, there are fortified mountain villages so picturesque that you’ll suspect fakery, and coastal watchtowers which make the beaches even more photogenic.
Our hotel, Le Goeland (pronounced Legoland), was below the towering citadel, overlooking the bay, with a charming garden and a scrappy little private beach made of builders’ sand. We lugged our suitcases happily to reception.
Now, we’d read about the Corsican people’s ‘fierce pride’ in our guidebooks. While we did met several superbly sociable Corsicans on our trip, we also found ‘fierce pride’ fairly often, and here, at Le Goeland, we met if for the first time. We quickly discovered that ‘fierce pride’ is a really just a euphemism for surliness.
I greeted the young female Goeland receptionist in my charming A-level French. My cheerily foppish Englishman-abroad approach wasn’t met with a room upgrade, as I’d hoped, but with narrow-eyed loathing. It took her a long time to find our reservation. I was tempted to spell out my name in the old 'battles we've won' method: “Watson. Waterloo, Agincourt, Trafalgar....” but I remained friendly. It didn’t help. It was clearly my fault that it took an age to find the reservation.
“What did you say to her?” asked Mary, as we hauled our suitcases it the direction the angry receptionist had finally deigned to moodily gesture towards. “For €250 a night you’d think they might tell us where our rooms are...”
Half an hour later, the barman literally sweated with rage after Mary, without first introducing herself, asked, in English, for a cocktail menu. It took ten minutes of francophone diplomacy to persuade him to serve us. For the remainder our stay, he afforded us the level of respect that a dedicated dad might reserve for a pair of travelling paedophiles.
It was by no means ubiquitous, this stroppiness, but it was common. Further into our Corsican odyssey, service was suspended in a pizza restaurant while the waiters had a fight. Before that, in Sartčne - reputedly Corsica’s least friendly town - I was angrily shouted at and run over within five seconds of getting out of the car. Not run over properly; I was glanced on the midriff by a wing mirror. In fact I could have jumped out of the way, but I wanted to see if the driver, heading straight for me with a look of determined hatred, was really going to carry it though. The shouter was a different man, two seconds earlier, commanding us not to park in a parking space that was completely legal, not blocking anything and next to several other empty spaces.
But we liked the ‘fierce pride’. It was amusing and interesting. I’d never been hit by a car before, for example, and now, when that conversation comes up, I’ll be able to say that I have. Best of all, Corsican’s reluctance to pander to the tourists’ whims by, for example, learning any English, meant that we saw hardly any other Brits in two weeks. Why that’s a good thing is hard to say without sounding anti-Brit. I suppose it’s just nice to escape the holiday-makers from one’s own country. Especially when holiday-makers from one’s own country are all too often badly dressed celeb-worshipers.
We decided that the ‘fierce pride’ issue was probably conquered island syndrome. Corsica is, after all, a vassal state of France, and they’re not all that happy about it. There is serious sectarian violence every now and then, but it’s directed at French-owned business rather than tourists. Tourists are Corsica’s chief cash cows, so any tourist-attackers would be lynched by the island’s not-totally-un-mafia-like business fraternity. They only manifestation of the simmering rebellion that the holiday-maker is likely to notice is that all the road signs in French are blasted with gunshot, while the ones in u Corsu ( the Corsican language) aren’t.
The idea of the angry Corsican is by no means new. The island is renowned as the vendetta capital of the world, where tiny slights have led to centuries of inter-clan conflict. For literary examples see Asterix in Corsica or The Corsican Brothers by Dumas. In Dumas’ book, decades of bloody murders and a village’s economic ruin result from someone throwing a chicken at someone else.
Angry Corsicans aside, dinner on that first night was as excellent as the service was grouchy (efficiently grouchy, mind you). In fact the food everywhere was near faultless. Particularly the charcuterie. If you’re a fan of salami, ham, sausage and other pork-based delights, then you’ll probably put on half a stone in Corsica, as I did.
After our first Corsican breakfast (great) we drove to a nearby beach, the Plage de Palombaggia: “one of the most beautiful bays in Europe” according to the Rough Guide.
Since it was mid August, we left straight after breakfast. All advice had told us to avoid Corsica in August, since it’s the school holidays for everyone in Europe. Prices are higher, and the place is absolutely rammed with Italian and French families. But, since Mary’s a teacher, we had no choice. People often say to teachers: “but you get all that holiday!” Problem is, it’s at the same time as everyone else’s.
So, even though we were early, we joined a small traffic jam on the rutted track to the beach. But it was fine. There were pretty trees and hills to look at, and the calming aroma of warm pine lulled us into happy fatalism. We soon parked easily in a well run, cheap car park. There were a hundred cars perhaps, but since the car park was just a bumpy, packed earth affair strewn with trees, it didn’t seem over-developed. Even the car park’s showers looked rudimentary and blending-with-the-environment enough not to offend the eco-aware.
We joined the masses for the five minute trek to the beach. I’ve got no problem with masses on a beach, as long as they don’t play that irritatingly noisy bat and ball game anywhere nearby. Yes, an empty beach is best, but if there are going to be any people at all, there might as well be loads. And if there are going to be loads, there may as well be fat men in tiny Speedos, crying children, over-friendly dogs, floppy-boobed grannies, dope-smoking teens, over-zealous ice cream vendors and the whole range of beach horrors. It gives you more to look at, and you can always escape by going snorkelling (which I did, and found some vaguely interesting fish (three of which are pictured above)).
The beach wasn’t unattractive, but “one of the most beautiful bays in Europe” is stretching it a bit, unless by “one of the most beautiful”, Rough Guide meant “in the top thousand”.
So the Plage de Palombaggia was crowded but fine. We found the real crowds on day two. It was my turn to choose activity, so we drove up the switchback roads into the interior to walk to a waterfall called Piscia Di Gallo. “If the heat and crowds of Porto Vecchio get too much,” our Lonely Planet guidebook had pointed out in a helpful box, “[Piscia Di Gallo is] an easy walk through pine forests and maquis.”
Whoever wrote that has never done the walk. It is beautiful, there are pine forests and maquis but it’s pretty far from “easy”. Towards the end, it’s more like rope-free abseiling than a walk.
Even more wrong was the idea that it was an escape from the crowds. The crowds had come too, and not just from Porto Vecchio. Everyone was there. Toddlers, grannies, children, lovers, parents, step-dads, sisters-in-law, great uncles... pretty much all of Italy and France and a good half of Germany, all in bright summer clothes and flip flops, all struggling against the narrow, difficult track. It was as if a massive tourist resort had been invaded by monsters and the holiday makers were refugees escaping into the rugged interior, unprovisioned and wearing whatever they’d had on when the horror struck.
At a particularly steep point, we heard a ruckus above. A middle-aged woman in shorts and a tank top was tumbling down the precipitous path towards us, careering off rocks sunhat over flip-flops. I braced to catch her, but she bounced to a stop just above us. She jumped up and, without dusting herself down or checking for injuries, without so much as glancing her would-be rescuers, she fixed a “Yeah, well I fall down cliffs every day” look on her face and carried on the relentless march to the waterfall.
It was strangest walk I’ve ever been on. As we neared the waterfall the path funnelled into a tight, vertiginous gulley - no doubt the course of a waterfall on wetter days. Mary, far from a keen walker at the best of times, decided she’s had enough, and sat on a rock to watch the hordes struggle by while I made the final descent to the waterfall alone. I picked my way downwards with the masses, past knots of catatonic children gripping helplessly onto tree-roots on the near-vertical mountainside.
It was a big waterfall, worth seeing-ish, but not deserving of its Niagara-like draw, nor the hell trek to get there.
Back to the car was uphill all the way, for an hour in midday sun. “Easy my arse!” observed Mary, who is not, it must be remembered, a keen walker at the best of times. But a scenic drive took us to the mountain village of Zonza, where we had an excellent pork-based lunch.
Like most Corsican towns and villages, Zonza is as picturesque as you can imagine. Human settlements – prehistoric hamlets, perched mountain villages, medieval fortress towns - have been etched so tastefully into Corsica’s wondrous landscape that it all seems part of some grand plan to convince modern visitors that the Ancient Greeks were right with the “most beautiful” thing.
After lunch, eager to escape the relentless press of tourists, I insisted on a very roundabout scenic route home. After finding the smallest, windiest roads on the map, we drove along tiny trails etched into the flanks of wooded mountains. The only other traffic was ancient farm vehicles, the odd cow, and troupes of little black piggies, munching windfallen spoils on the roadside. As I gasped with delight at the sheer beauty of each new vista, Mary, who’d had quite a lot of rosé at lunch, slept soundly in the passenger seat.
Not overly gutted to leave Porto Vecchio and Le Goeland the following morning, we headed for Bonifacio. Bonifacio is a ‘must see’ in Corsica; an elegant, white, history-stuffed town on the southern tip, crammed so tightly onto a rocky peninsular that the houses bulge out over the sea below, in which, apparently, there is great snorkelling.
It is possibly amazing, but we wouldn’t know. It being August, we sat in a traffic jam on the only road down the gorge into town for ages, then all the car parks were full. We probably could have pushed it and parked semi-illegally, but, since we were only driving an hour or so up the coast to our next hotel, we resolved to get up very early and come back in a couple of days.
So we drove out of town, eyes front, careful not to see too much and spoil our return. That was a mistake, in hindsight, since we never went back. It wasn’t pure laziness, our non return, it was because our hour’s drive north turned out to be six hours. The east side of Corsica is flat, so you can drive the whole coast in next to no time on a good, straight road. The west is crazily hilly, so it takes ages to get anywhere. It looks like a main road on the map, that western highway, but it’s more like a goat track. With lorries.
It wasn’t a massive problem. We enjoyed the drive. We went through a huge area that had just been obliterated by a forest fire. It stank of smoke. Smashed, blackened skeletons of trees pointing desolately skyward were all that was left of whatever there was before.
On from Sartčne, we went to Filitosa. I’d expected Filitosa to be perhaps THE highlight of the trip. It’s a world-renowned Iron Age relic, standing stones and rock-hewn dwellings, i.e. a preserved settlement of the people who were around before the Romans started keeping records. I love the Iron Age. There were huge forts, massive societies, epic battles, and events as big as, say, the 100 Years War, yet we know absolutely nothing about any of it, because nobody wrote anything down. So, once you’ve learned all there is to know about it, which takes about 15 minutes, you’re free to imagine anything you want. “Was it like Conan the Barbarian, with heroes rescuing virgins from snake sacrifices?” I once asked the UK’s leading expert on the Iron Age, when I was writing a feature on it. “That’s as good a representation as we have” he told me.
So we cut that visit short, soothing our disappointment with gigantic iced lollies, and carried on our northward slog to our beach hotel near Ajaccio, where Napoleon was born (in Ajaccio, not our hotel). The seaside Hôtel d’Orcino wasn’t the most expensive we stayed in, but it was the best, with a massive room, great views from our large balcony, a good pool (below), and snorkelling too.
Our two nights at Hôtel d’Orcino was meant to contain a day and a half of culture-dodging and exercise-free sun lounger time, but, as I’d miscalculated the journey time, we arrived at sunset (quite a good sunset, below)and missed half a day’s lounging.
If Mary minded, she didn’t show it, and the following day she threw herself with impressive zeal into lying-by-the-pool action. As did I, only stopping for an hour or so’s snorkelling, which was so good that even Mary – not a keen swimmer at the best of times – was persuaded come in for a while. It was an excellent place to do nothing, the only downside being that our hotel didn’t do supper, so we had to walk about a mile to a vibrant beach restaurant, irritatingly full of fun and noise.
Driving up the coast to Porto, now on day six, we detoured inland, up into the massif, hoping to bathe in some hot baths at Guagno les bains. They were shut though, so we carried on uphill and found, quite by mistake, a in village called Soccia at the end of the road, the best restaurant in the world: –the Merendella.
At the Merendella, we sat in a garden perched on the edge of large, lush maquis-filled valley and ate the finest food we’d ever had. My charcuterie starter, Mary’s pork pie main, and my white chocolate pudding would be my final meal on death row. It would be, literally, good enough to make you forget that you’re about to be fried alive. And it was all served by a smiley Corsican woman who made us feel genuinely welcome.
As we cruised windingly downhill after lunch through lush maquis in exhausted post-prandial bliss, farm animals politely stepped out of the Twingo’s way, and watched us pass with mournful (cow) or mischievous (pig) brown eyes.
Porto was half port, half Disney village. So twee and yo-hee-ho was the harbourside that, drinking there that evening, we expected animatronic pirates to appear from behind walls and shout “Arrrrgh!” at us. It is an attractive town though, with a good shingle beach, all dominated by a huge Genoese watchtower on a rocky promontory, all in turned loomed over by a magnificent, cliff-faced, kilometre-high mountain (left).
The waiter-fight in the pizza restaurant happened that evening. It’s possible it was Mary’s fault. It did start just after she’d passed all the waiters on the way to the loo, and she is attractive enough to start a fight between the sort of men who fight. But we’ll never know. It was briefly violent, then the staff were all a bit teary for the rest of the evening, like a class of teenagers at a schoolmate’s funeral, but with less hugging.
Porto is brilliantly placed between three supreme examples of dramatic natural beauty: the Calanche of Piana, the Scandola marine nature reserve, and the Spelunca gorges. So the next the afternoon, after a morning on the beach, we drove up into the Spelunca gorges, parked the car at Evisa, and walked a four mile section of the Mare e Monti trail down to Ota.
The path coiled down through a steep forest, with glimpses of cliff-faces above, and green valley below. At the bottom we found a Genoese stone footbridge with no hand rail, several hundred years old. It wouldn’t last two seconds in Britain. You’d have to wear a high vis jacket and a safety harness just to look at it. We crossed it with glee.
Carrying on along the stream, set deep in its Spelunca gorge, we searched for a swimming hole in vain. There were plenty, but there was a family at each and it didn’t seem the done thing to join them.
Eventually, below a second Genoese Bridge, we found a quiet pool. I stripped to boxers and leapt in. Well, actually I paddled in gingerly, arms held mincingly aloft. It was cold. Mary was about to join me when a huge family trooped down the hill, stripped, and piled noisily into our pool. No sense of privacy, these Europeans.
One of us refreshed, we headed up the valley side to Ota and dinner. By now Mary, who, it should be remembered, doesn’t like walks at the best of times, had had quite enough of walking and, as we marched into Ota at sunset she powered on ahead (below), and perhaps didn’t fully appreciate how stunning it was.
Ota is an ancient sleepy town (as they all are) tucked beneath a huge overhanging rock outcrop which looks like it might tumble and crush everything at any moment. Local children are told that the rock is held up there by monks pulling on chains. Let’s hope none of them google “monks chains” as I just did to check the story. You get a less fairytale result.
Up early the next day, we were off by boat to part two of Porto’s attractions – the Scandola marine nature reserve. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site, where huge, folded igneous rock formations meet the sea.
It was very gawp-worthy. We went on a big tourist boat, which did the trick, but, with hindsight, it would have been much better to rent a speed boat so that we could have snorkelled into the tight inlets made by splits in the madly towering rock.
Back in town, we went the aquarium, which was rubbish, then had a fine game of crazy golf on an excellent course, only slightly marred by a very heated argument taking place in a nearby ice cream hut, then hit the beach. Shingle of the right size is very lie-on-able, better then sand. Porto beach’s shingle is the right size.
We never made it to the Calanche de Piana, twisted rock formations to the south of Porto. We’d seen enough stunning maritime scenery, so we headed into the interior for the holiday’s mountain walking section.
Our hotel near Vizzavona, the Monte D’Oro, was right below the colossal megalith of the 2389m Monte D’Oro. Being overlooked by a gigantic mountain was becoming a bit of a theme. Does this physical domination by nature contribute to Corsican man’s anger, we wondered? Probably not, as the Monte D’Oro hotel lot were very friendly, if extraordinarily odd.
The hotel was like something flung forward in time from an Agatha Christie novel. Its early 20th century hunting lodge decor – animal heads, vast sinks with soap on metal prongs – was juxtaposed by two incongruous, helpful, but definitely creepy Asian waiters, and a waitress who spoke disconcertingly passable English. The wild boar and mountain trout based food was good, although perhaps a triumph of quantity over quality. Our room, one of two in a giant wooden hut out back, was basic but spacious, with thin walls – our neighbours were coughers – and itchy sheets. The hotel was, of course, totally Brit free. I loved it. Mary wasn’t convinced.
The next day was walk-tastic. We joined a section of the GR20, a trail very famous amongst walkers. We met it at the Cascade Des Anglais (although there were no Anglais about) and headed up a flank of Monte D’Oro through wooded, craggy landscape. It was no Piscia Di Gallo walk – for longish stretches we didn’t see any other tourists – but it was pretty busy with the usual toddler to granny range of chattering Europeans.
After perhaps an hour of sweaty marching up through the sort of mellow verdant forest that makes you want to live in a cabin in the woods, we eventually found our goal, or at least Mary’s goal: a quiet place away from the main drag to sunbathe.
Off the GR20 path, back-tracking down the gorge, we discovered a clearing and some flat rocks by the gurgling mountain stream. Geckoes zoomed across the stones, and butterflies wafted between bright green fir trees. It was such a pretty spot, in fact, that within two minutes another couple had followed us and laid their towels out about five feet away from ours. A minute later a family arrived and settled another ten feet upstream.
We packed up and moved on, Mary stamping a little.
It was a blessing in disguise. We carried on up the valley, saw some more awesome scenery, reached the tree-line (which pleased me greatly), and found a much better spot for our sunbathe.
Hunger meant we didn’t dally long though. It was back down to the Cascade Des Anglais for lunch at an overpriced snack cabin, then on down the GR20 to Vizzavona. There we found an excellent ruined hotel, which I explored while Mary kept guard. Then it was uphill, back home to the weird Hotel Monte D’Oro.
On the final hill, we passed a huge ‘Parc Aventure’: a collection of ropes, ladders and slides strung at various heights though the woods. It looked like hell, and, indeed, there was a child twenty feet off the ground, crying bitterly and refusing to walk the tightrope across to the next tree, despite the security of her harness and hard hat.
On return, while Mary washed her hair happily, I jogged a little higher up the valley to the derelict castle (below). It was worth the trip. It’s derelict because the occupying Italians in World War II used its stones to build a chapel in the grounds of our hotel (very easy to imagine fascist Italians strutting about under Monte D’Oro’s stuffed animal heads). It was a
good castle, with explorable underground rooms and half-destroyed stairways, and smashed walls wonderfully back-dropped by the gigantic Monte D’Oro.
We’d walked for about seven hours that day, so, after Mary had clinched the Scrabble series 5-4 in a controversial victory (I had bad letters), we were better prepared to tackle the vast supper.
Although she hadn’t been overly happy on the last hill, Mary, who, it must be remembered, doesn’t like walking at the best of times, was so pleased about how far we’d gone, and how much fitter she felt because of it, that I was able to persuade her to come walking again the next day.
The next day’s walk, partly on another section of the GR20 was up to a shepherd’s hut called the Bergiers de Tolla. It was pretty much perfect. It was less accessible – we had to park the Twingo at a 45 degree angle on a tiny roadside, so there were far fewer people. The trees, shrubs and mosses made a cascade of lush greens either side of
a perfectly clean stream. There were giant ants, dragonflies, butterflies, waterfalls, and, of course, a looming mountain (another flank of the Monte D’Oro). Lunch was excellent ham, bread and cheese bought from a chatty woman at the Bergiers de Tolla itself. Best of all, on the way back, we finally found a private swimming hole and both enjoyed a plunge in the freezing water.
Our final venue was three nights in Algajola, all rather coloured by the fact that I picked up some kind of tummy thing on the first night. I think it was the fish soup. Whatever it was, I was reminded that explosive diarrhoea isn’t as fun as it sounds. Our hotel bathroom door was very thin, so Mary didn’t like it much either. Neither did the room next door, who turned on the telly at 5am to mask the noise.
We’d planned to visit Calvi and its citadel from Algajola one afternoon / evening, but the tramway, which I’d been excited about for two weeks, was shut. And besides, it didn’t do for me to be too far from a loo. So we spent two days on the beach. I don’t think Mary minded, and neither did I (although I'm half Scottish and my Scottish half worried about having the hire car sitting unused for two days). It was a good beach; long, curving and sandy. Apparently it’s a good surfing beach, but there were no waves when we were there. There were plenty of learner wind-surfers and sailors though.
We splashed out on some high tech sun loungers, in a roped off area safe from the bat and ball players, and spend two days reading English newspapers and books, snorkelling (not bad). We particularly enjoyed watching the novice windsurfers crash into the inexperienced sailors, and laughing at the windsurfing instructors (“yes, that’s right, I am holding the sail with one hand, and yes, I am wearing shades because I’m so good I’m not going to fall in. Like never.”).
And then it was time to go home. Checking in for our early morning flight, we were stunned by the amount of British people crowding the spacious art-decco airport, clutching cartons of fags and shouting at sunburnt children. Where had they all been? Bags deposited, I went to get coffees.
“Avez-vous du lait?” I asked the coffee vendor.
“Oooh hark at him!” said one of the two fat sisters in the queue behind me, with surprisingly aggressive sarcasm for that time of the morning. “Isn’t he fancy, talking the lingo!”
We had the answer. There are plenty of British people on Corsica. They just stay in hotel complexes where they don’t have to speak French. Arguably, that’s not making the best of it.
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