Corsica
Alan's Log:
Joan's Log:
May 3rd 2008
Route from Nice to Bonifacio, South Corsica
Not to be used for navigation
When I started to write my log about Corsica all my old, tired and over-used adjectives like beautiful, fabulous and amazing just didn't apply and seemed redundant. It was just so much more, even the word special wasn't enough. I am at a loss for words...it is a combination of places I have been to and a few I have not. It has the turquoise coves of St. John's, USVI and the boulder- strewn shores of The Baths on Virgin Gorda, BVI; The mountains of Washington state and the cliffs and colors of the Grand Canyon; The rolling-green farm land of Virginia; The tiny villages of Provence; The hiking trails of the Swiss Alps and the Dolomites; The beaches of St. Barts and the mystery of Easter Island and Stonehenge; The food and wine of France and Italy and the smell of my herbal Aveda shampoo! That pretty much covers it... it's now all up to Alan to explain.
When we started planning this adventure Corsica was on my 'must see' list. I have never been there but have always wanted to go, I am fascinated by islands and island culture, and Corsica promised so much; Rugged scenery; beautiful anchorages; a culture of small clans that hatched the term "Vendetta" . They still sell perfectly functional stiletto knives with the word "Vendetta" engraved on the blade! A country populated with hardy people bred from the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Spanish, Italians and many others that invaded and stayed a while but never quite conquered the spirit of the people; French food; Italian food; French wine; Locally produced olive oil, you get the idea. Then there are the awesome hikes; the world renowned GR20 and the challenging Mare e Monti (Sea to Mountains).
So Corsica had a lot to live up to. Did it? In one sentence; It is my favorite destination so far!!
Calvi
We sailed and motor-sailed from Nice to Calvi on the north-west coast of Corsica. A journey of 92 nautical miles, that took most of the daylight hours. We anchored just outside the harbour of Calvi
, in an area
that is apparently filled with mooring buoys in the summer months, but now in
late April/early May is open for anchoring. It was but a five minute
dinghy ride to the harbour where we could tie-up our dinghy on the harbour
wall.The town is dominated by its citadel which is built on bare rock overlooking the ocean and rising above the town. Not too far away are the mountains, green, then grey then white and snowcapped. In May, there is still snow in some of the higher valleys. It is a spectacular arrival. Our best yet. The citadel is still in use, some of its buildings are used as a mess hall for the 2nd Parachute Regiment of the famous French Foreign Legion. We saw the paratroupers as they came and went preparing for their annual "open house" at the base nearby. We tried to see the parade but our information was out of date and it no longer runs through the town as we had been led to expect. Still the paratroupers looked very tough and serious in their dress uniforms. One of the unique things about the Foreign legion is its guarantee of anonimity. If you are accepted and pass the tough entrance tests, and serve for 5 years, you can be granted French citizenship and, if you want it, a new identity - regardless of past sins.
There were a couple of other cruising boats anchored, including a dutch boat WINDSWEPT, that we would get to know later in our voyage, but no crowds and the harbour had plenty of space for the participants of a major yacht race that would arrive in a few days from Antibes. For now it was quiet and the town was clearly getting ready for the summer with civil projects and beach work underway. Calvi is a pretty little town of pastel buildings and a long pleasant scythe-shaped beach that runs for several miles. A narrow gauge railway line runs along the coast connecting all the beaches.
Balagna
We rented a scooter for a day and toured the region, called the Balagna.
It was a day of spectacular scenery, challenging switchbacks and- not quite ready for the tourist season- villages.
We picked a good time to visit. There were few tourists and no coaches on the roads, but you could tell from the size of the parking lots in some of these small villages that they would be jam-packed later in the summer.
The weather was perfect, not too hot, clear and sunny and we rocked! We bought croissants in a small bakery, took them to a cafe where we had coffee, (we were told if we wanted croissants we had to go get them!). We stopped at a village built on top of a mountain. Its so small on top that they had to dig tunnels through the rock to get to the higher parts of the village.
The houses seem to have grown out of the bare rock.
We ate locally cured air-dried ham, omelette with local brocciu cheese (which is only available from November till June while the goats are lactating), veal stew with huge fava beans, more local cheese and creme custard all for €13 each at a plain terraced restaurant called, appropriately enough "Belle Vue".
Back in Calvi we walked the beach, shopped a little and did some laundry then it was time to move on to Girolata.
Girolata & the Scandola Nature Reserve
Girolata is an anchorage, in a small
bay that is protected by a Genoese fort. There are about a dozen houses in
Girolata and the road stops at the commune limit. It provides food and accommodation to hikers and to
day trippers that come and go on small ferries. 
The only access to the village is by boat or mountain trail. There is a retired legionaire who worked as a postman in this region. His name is Guy and they made a documentary about him in France so he became a local celebrity. His delivery route included the quiet commune of Girolata which is surrounded by a nature reserve with no roads in or out. That's kind of redundant, why do people say no roads in or out. If there's a road in surely you could take the same one out? Its a pretty little place that just happens to be a 15 mile hike across the mountains. Guy didn't deliver the mail every day but he did deliver it year round, by foot along a narrow mountain trail. For all I know he still makes his deliveries, Though last I heard he had been given a post office motorbike. He would be in his 80's today.
Here is a typical Corsica weekend;
Summer has just arrived in Corsica and the days are sunny with clear blue skies. The temperature gets up to the 80's during the day but the days start and end cool, particularly on the water. We decided to hike "the postman's trail" named after Guy's route across the mountains. We left Moonstruck in Girolata bay and dinghied to shore and walked along the beach to the trail head. The postman's trail ran around the coast. It was a 3 hour hike in pristine country that took us to the top of two mountains and back down to sea level.
I would say that Guy had a great job in the summer and the winters must have been a bitch!
We passed only 8 people on the hike. We found a lovely pebble beach at Taura, about half-distance, and when we got back to Moonstruck we decided to leave Girolata and anchor off this beach.
We had the beach pretty much to ourselves other than a few hikers who would stop for a little while to rest and enjoy the scenery and indulge other primal urges before heading onward. We particularly enjoyed a small beachlet off to one side of the main beach which contained only red and black pebbles. The location was idyllic BUT the beach was full of trash!!! The beach is on the Scandola nature reserve and is only reachable by hikers and boats. No tourist boats stop here and we saw practically no litter while walking the trail so I doubt that the trash on the beach is of local origin. Anyway it was all on the shore line, not on the trail or up in the hills, and we had noticed quite a lot of plastic in the water as we motored into the area. The beach is open to the west, and to the west is....Spain. I strongly suspect most of the trash comes from overseas. We have garbage bags on board and space to store excess garbage hanging off the stern and I simply could not enjoy the beach covered with litter, so I found my afternoon project. I filled three garbage sacks the first day and 99% of the garbage I picked up was plastic, mostly bags and wrappers, but a significant quantity of bottle tops, a few plastic bottles and other debris. Work done, we spent a couple of hours enjoying the beach before retiring to Moonstruck for the evening.
Two other small yachts arrived just before dark, both French and travelling in tandem with young families and each had a dog on board. The dogs were walked, the kids ran off their excess energy on the beach, it got dark. Just three small boats in a nature reserve on a calm sea and a clear night. We barbecued some chicken and had a salad..... The next morning more trash had washed up on the beach so I filled another three garbage sacks with it while Joan set up her art workshop on the aft deck and painted for most of the day. The two other boats left early and we had the anchorage to ourselves for the next night.
The hike that we had enjoyed so much is a small section of one of Corsica's best long hikes, the Mare e Monti- Nord (Sea to Mountains- North). We checked the guide book and found another section of this same hike just a little further along the coast. So we motored about 7 nautical miles to the small touristy town of Porto.
Porto & the river gorge hike
Porto enjoys a scenic location at the mouth of a river and is overlooked by yet another Genoese fort.
In fact the entire coast is ringed with defensive forts or lookout towers, each within sight and signalling distance of the next. We were able to anchor off the beach
and rented
a scooter to get to the trailhead. The terrain here is mountainous right
to the coast and in no time at all we were coaxing the scooter up
tortuous switchbacks of single-track road while dodging the occasional goat herd and a
pack of free ranging pigs.
This section of the trail runs between the Genoese bridges Ponto Vecchju and Ponto Zaglia along the bottom of a river gorge full of giant boulders.
These footbridges, built in the late 1700's, are so elegant that they appear fragile, and the smaller of the two is only one rock thick at the apex.
They were built to allow the village people to move quickly (a relative term) from the coast up into the mountains when they were threatened during various coastal invasions. The walls of the gorge reach 3,000' feet above us and the air is filled with the sound of water and the scent of the fragrant vegetation. We had lunch on a boulder in the river and later took a paddle, but the water was too cold to want to swim.
After after hiking up through a lovely shaded oak glade we returned to the trailhead realizing that we just had time to make a detour, again by scooter to the Calanches. This is a UNESCO world heritage site and features spiralling pinnacles of rock in pink and hues of red. We rode through the park and stopped to take pictures.
It is a worthy site, but we were not inspired, I guess we had our fill of rocks today.
By the time we bought groceries, dropped off the scooter and dinghied back to the anchorage it had become pretty rolly and looked like it was getting worse. Not fancying a sleepless night we checked the chart and found another anchorage 16 nautical miles along the coast which would be protected from this wind direction. We quickly made the boat ready and headed out, arriving at Cargese in time to anchor
just as
the sun was dipping below the horizon.
Propriano and the pre-historic sites
We decided to base ourselves in the marina port of Propriano for a few days while we explored several sites that feature Menhir statues from approx 3,000 BC as well as a prehistoric village and the best example of a Dolmen in Corsica.
We had hoped to rent a car for this exploration but it was a holiday and all the cars were gone, so we climbed aboard yet another underpowered motorcycle and wobbled off in the direction of Filitosa.
The site at Filitosa is extremely well presented with audio announcements on demand in 4 languages at the principal locations. It is a pleasant walk through absolutely beautiful surroundings in a gently sloping valley.
It must have taken the skills of a jigsaw-puzzle expert to reassemble the menhirs which had been broken up by subsequent invaders and used in the construction of their homes. The site is well cared for and illuminated at night though we chose to visit during the day. The only slightly unsettling note was the new-age background music piped around the valley.
On the way to Filitosa we passed a lovely long stretch of sandy beach-front divided into small beaches by smooth,worn rock outcrops. Nestled above one such beach was a smart-looking Pizza restaurant (Una Stonda). We stopped on the way back for lunch and had memorable thin crust Pizzas (a Napoli and a Diablo).
Thus fortified we climbed back aboard for a butt-numbing hour over a potholed road to the amazing site at Cauria. The site is spread out over a mile or so on a high windswept plain and is a half-mile walk from the end of the road. Entry is free and it is so remote that we had it pretty much to ourselves. There are a number of menhirs, more worn and difficult to decypher than those at Filitosa (which ironically benefited from having been protected from the elements for several thousand years while they formed building blocks). The highlight of this site however is the large Dolmen, the largest in Corsica with a massive capstone weighing several tons.
By the time we were back in Propriano we had covered over 100 kilometers, mostly on twisty and/or potholed roads and were completely exhausted. A car would have made all the difference on this itinerary!
Bonifacio
Bonifacio was our last stop in Corsica. The entrance to the bay is spectacular as Bonifacio appears in a narrow fjord, protected by a small fort on one side and a massive citadel on the other.
It was a tight squeeze getting into our mooring and a friendly Dutch couple helped us with our lines. We didn't know it at the time but they were from WINDSWEPT, the boat we had seen earlier anchored in Calvi and we would get to know them later in Olbia, Sardinia.
As we motored into the harbour
we could see old gun emplacement tunnels set deep into the cliff
walls. We read that in 1420 the inhabitants of Bonifacio
had withstood a five month seige by 80 invading Aragonese ships.
The citadel looks just as impregnable today, access by foot involves passing through 5 separate city gates protected by heavy doors and drawbridges. Unfortunately it rained during our stay here so we didn't explore beyond the town itself.
As soon as the rain ended, we filled our water tanks and headed south to Sardinia, a short sail between the rocky Maddalena islands reminiscent of the British Virgin Islands.
NEXT....Sardinia.