Corsica's Beaches

Firstly, a coup d’état at LeGrandPont, now being written by Dale. David HAS to start using his time to find some work pour le retour! I have a lifestyle that needs ongoing support.

After the 3 weeks of back to back hiking we were definitely ready for some fun in the sun. We just made our bus to Bonifacio in time, and spent the 2 hour trip coming down from the adrenaline of the horror car trip to meet the bus.

Bonifacio, at the southern extremity of Corsica, is a well photographed town because of its stunning location atop a rock plateau facing the sea. It has a calm natural harbour that plays host to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. All day ginormous private yachts come and go (seemingly for 2 purposes: 1 to replenish bunkers; 2 to flaunt their wealth). On the 2nd point, one amusing example had a yacht slowly backing into the port whilst up top scantily clad girls danced and drank champagne with much older men to blaring music. It was like a mobile midlife crisis on public display.

Bonifacio from the sea

Bonifacio harbour

There are few accessible beaches near Bonifacio because of the cliffs, and the major attraction is to take a boat trip out to the Ile Lavezzi, a small island of stunning coves and inlets. All day boats come and go depositing people for a little time in paradise. This was without doubt the best swimming of the holiday.

Ile Lavezzi

Paddling around the calm inlet

On the return trip the boat swung past Ile Cavallo, which is a private island of the filthy rich and famous. The captain gave a running commentary of which house belonged to which person (lots of minor European royalty and sports stars). However we weren’t particularly impressed (I was prompted to comment that it was like Patterson Lakes in the Mediterranean), so let’s move on.

We spent a long afternoon walking around the old town and out to the end of the rocky headland where we found an immaculate cemetery of mausoleums. The individualisation of the designs was fascinating and I think there were far more tourists walking around than visitors for the residents

At one point we came across 5 guys doing an impromptu photo shoot. They were on the edge of the cliff and posing in their underwear. We speculated that they were probably updating their Facebook profiles or perhaps some other web based social network.

After Bonifacio we needed to duck up to Porto Vecchio to get a hire car. We stopped at a beautiful beach on the east coast called Santa Guilia. It had lovely fine white sand and warm shallow water. At all the beaches we’ve been to in France and Spain adults spend literally hours standing in the shallows with ping pong bats hitting a ball back and forward. What gives? Does this induce some hypnotic Zen-like state? Is it for pose value? There must be something in it, but it seems very boring to me.

We then headed back up the West coast for a week in Olmeto, a little town on a hill overlooking the sea at Propriano. When we did the detailed holiday planning we thought it would be good to stay in one spot for a week after all the hiking. However we had difficulty finding self contained accommodation as the Corsicans don’t seem to like responding to emails. As a requirement for getting our French VISA we had to have evidence of 3 months of booked accommodation, so we went with plan B for this week and booked into a Gite offering demi-pension (breakfast and dinner included). The gite was a real mixed bag. Our room with en suite turned out to be a bathroom across the hall (“but exclusively yours” said the receptionist). Meals were served on a beautiful terrace, which as well as catering to guests was also a restaurant. Breakfasts were the typical bread and jam affair, but dinners were a full blown 5 courses (soup; charcuterie (delicious!); main; cheese; dessert). After the first night we thought we were going to explode, but were feeling very pleased with the offering. What we didn’t appreciate on the first night was that the menu didn’t particularly change. Thus the soup was always a choice between the same vegetable and fish soup. The main was always a meat dish: night 1 was beef stew in brown sauce; night 2 was lamb stew in (the same) brown sauce; night 3 was boar stew in (the same) brown sauce etc. On night 4 we paid to have dinner elsewhere just for a change. All of this wasn’t helped by having a hostess who for some reason couldn’t crack a smile in our direction, except when she was trying to up sell us on the wine or a digestive.

One night there was a local singing group providing entertainment on the Terrace

Olmeto

The one upside of dining at the terrace was the greeting from the young kitten that stationed itself at the entrance and proceeded to beg for food. Each morning and night it would be there crying out and garnering all the attention and pity from children and catophiles like us. I have to admit to smuggling out several pieces of “meat in brown sauce” over the week. One time I saw the kitten’s mother monitoring proceedings from a distance, and I couldn’t help but draw a parallel with organised begging in cities.

As they say in French “mignon” (cute)

During the week we were joined by Fiona who made a side trip from her visit to London. We drove up to Ajaccio in advance of her flight arriving and had a brief walk before plonking at a Wi-Fi spot for lunch. At the end of our week in Olmeto we were to have caught the train from Ajaccio to Bastia in the north, so we went via the station to checkout tickets. We were met at the station by signs saying “Greve”, which is French for strike. The train drivers had decided to go out on strike at the height of the tourist season for a 32% pay claim. So we spent the rest of the week not knowing if the strike would be resolved and if not, how we’d get to Bastia where we had already paid for ferry tickets back to Marseille. After lunch we took a dip at the 7km long beach at Ajaccio then collected Fiona from the airport opposite the beach.

The very handy beach at Ajaccio.

Fiona stayed at a couple of hotels in Propriano, and each day we swung by and went off touring, always ending up at a different beach. The first day we visited the town of Sartene, which is said to be the heartland of the Corsican separatist movement, as well as the home of vendetta killings. There was also a nice potter, so we hope the jug we bought survives the trip home. From there we ventured to the beach at Portigliolo, and typical of the beaches on the West coast it was less crowded, had courser sand and deeper water.

The following day we set off to pick up Fiona only to get caught in a terrible “bouchon” (traffic jam). The roads in Corsica are notoriously slow at the best of times, so an accident can cause major trouble. As we headed down the hill towards Propriano, the traffic stopped dead. After about 20 minutes of sitting in the bouchon, we found an alternate route in our great French Road Atlas but it meant doing a U-turn and going back to Olmeto. However, we didn’t count on there being a bouchon the other way as well, caused by Olmeto’s main street being an alternating one-way system. Now you have to appreciate that the one and only road that runs through Olmeto is part of the National highway, but it is deemed more important to have some street parking for the residents than to have a lane each way: thus a traffic light sits at each end of the town regulating turns. So we hit the backlog of traffic heading towards Ajaccio and didn’t get to our turn off at Olmeto for another 25 minutes. All up the 10 minute trip to collect Fiona took an hour.

David felt the desire for some culture so in spite of the heat we visited an outdoor archaeological site composing of Menhirs. Now for anyone familiar with The Adventures of Asterix and Obelix, you’ll know what a Menhir is, even if you don’t know what it is for. For the rest of you, see the photo below and join the rest of us in speculating upon their practical uses as no-one really knows.

Mmmm....menhirs

To cool down our excitement, we took a dip at the difficult to reach (but popular!) Plage de Cupabia



One of the highlights of Corsica is some famous Calanques north of Ajaccio. We set out early, but again the slowness of roads in Corsica was a major frustration. The trip took 3 hours each way. The Calanques were beautiful, but I wasn’t in much of a mood to enjoy them by the time we got there.


The Calanques

On the return trip we had an abundant choice of gorgeous beaches and decided to take a dip near Sagone. This was Fiona’s last day with us, so we had a drink at her hotel before she joined us for 5 courses in Olmeto.


David and I spent our last 2 days at a nearby beach which had fantastic marine life. With our goggles we spent hours floating about, occasionally diving down to investigate the aquatic shenanigans of the fish. We also had the less pleasant task of sitting a 90 minute French exam on-line for the language school in Tours that we were heading for next. As our hotel in Olmeto did not have Wi-Fi, we had to do this in an internet cafe in Propriano.


By the end of the week the train strike had not been resolved, so we changed our car hire arrangements to drive the car up to Bastia rather than leaving it in Ajaccio. This was a long drive requiring us to return to the south of the island before driving up the majority of the east coast (approx 220km). Despite this being mostly flat roads, it took us 5 hours due to multiple bouchons at towns along the way (often up to 5km long) caused by no more than the annoying habit some people have of double parking to run in for a baguette. Still the car was returned exactly on time, and we had a lovely 2 days fossicking around the beautiful town of Bastia.
Bastia was once the capital of Corsica until Napoleon unilaterally bestowed this honour on his home town of Ajaccio. This might provide the explanation for the campy statue of him in the town square.

Other than doing a big walk around, we continued our attempts to watch French films in cinemas. This time we saw the adolescent comedy “Neuilly – Sa mere!” about a poor French Arabic kid from the housing estates who is sent to live with his Aunt in a posh Paris suburb. We found it very amusing based on the 50% we understood, so it’s probably uproariously funny.

Napoleon dressed by Versace?

Bastia old port



We caught the overnight Ferry back to Marseille before jetting to the UK for a lightening visit to my great Uncle John (89) and Auntie Vera (86). We flew with the notoriously stingy Ryan Air, and I’ll leave it up to you to picture us re-packing, re-dressing and throwing out stuff at the Ryan Air counter at Marseille airport. We ditched over 7kg of stuff (our beloved French road atlas (1.5kg); beach towels; novels not yet read; Corsica lonely planet; my old runners etc). It’s all very well for airlines to publish luggage weight restrictions, but whoever has access to bathroom scales when on holidays?

Uncle John and Auntie Vera out for lunch

Ruminations on Corsica
As a general thing in Corsica we also found the people unforgiving with our French pronunciation, and often found ourselves having to repeat things multiple times when we knew that our pronunciation was not much off the mark (it is ironic that the French, who get a bad rap over treatment of foreigners, are actually great and very obliging when you speak French; but the Corsicans who don’t much feel affinity with the French are touchy about how French is spoken).