Corsica : a tour in May 1999
1. Bastia to Porto.2. Porto to Zonza.
3. Zonza to Corte.
4. Corte to Bastia.
Part 2. Porto to Zonza
Thursday 20 May 1999
We are now in Bottacina, near Ajaccio, and life is feeling just a little surreal at the moment. It is probably a combination of the many things we have done and the many wines we have tasted since our arrival only four days ago.
Last night we spent in an excellent hotel in Porto, a little resort we had enjoyed greatly. During the night, which had started hot and sticky, a thunderstorm broke and we were awoken several times as the thunder echoed around the enormous rose granite crags towering above our little hotel down in the valley.
By the time we were organised and ready to depart, it was 9.30 and pouring with rain. We went to the little supermarket to stock up with salad stuff, Corsican wine, bread, fruit, chocolate, etc., and set off along the steep ascent out of Porto towards Les Calanches, where we parked by the Tête de Chien and walked out along a rough, slippery footpath, through the woods to a fort on the headland, where we could look back at Les Calanches from the seaward side, and across the blue bay to Porto and the little harbour we visited last night.
Calanches, with road cut along cliff
Calanches, view south
Calanches
Calanches, view toward Porto
Les Calanches are a huge outcrop of pink porphyritic granite, weathered by ages into weird and mysterious shapes on a gargantuan scale with the beautiful Mediterranean as a backdrop. From the clifftop fort, we could look back and see our road as nothing more than the slash of a scar on the face of the cliffs. It is the only route southwards, so all the traffic has to negotiate the narrow route on what must be one of Europe's most beautiful main roads - and one of the narrowest and most twisting.
Calanches, road from Château Fort
Calanches, Château Fort (332 meters)
Calanches, wildlife
We arrived at Piana about lunchtime. The rain had long since stopped, and the sun was bright and warm. Piana proved to be a very agreeable little town; not a lot in the centre, mostly bars and restaurants where everyone stopped to drink or take a coffee on a terrace. We wandered around the village back streets, full, as most of the villages here are, of dogs, tiny black cats, geraniums, cactuses, and lines of washing. Elderly ladies, dressed in black, sat outside their homes in the sunshine and smiled as we passed - all very friendly. We picnicked near the car and then continued to Cargese, where apparently the local people speak a Greek variant of the Corse language. The town was settled in 1774 by Greeks who had fled the repression of the Ottoman Empire, and had been hounded from place to place in Corsica. Two churches in a restrained baroque style face each other across a small dip filled with vegetable gardens. The Greek church has an iconostasis filled with images and with paintings in the medieval Greek style. The Roman Catholic church has elaborate wall paintings in a trompe l'oeil style. The rest of the town is strung in parallel shaded streets, linked by steps across the slope above the harbour. A green, sleepy place, hardly the sort of centre for our daughter Kate, should she find work in the Club Mediterranée just a couple of miles to the north. We stopped for a drink and watched workmen attempting to install a tannoy system in the trees, their legs dangling out of the pollarded branches and with sudden bursts of Corsican song blasting forth. They seemed to make very little progress while we watched, largely because one man seemed to have broken his hammer.
We continued along the coast road, the scenery pleasant but less spectacular than previously, and then climbed over a ridge to see the Golfe d'Ajaccio before us. A string of roundabouts, linked by poorly maintained roads and lined by the usual warehouses, brought us into the hooting, snarling chaos of he rush hour in Ajaccio.
The population of Corsica is 250,000 of which 60,000 live in Ajaccio, and all of them seemed to be on the move, or rather jammed solid. Eventually we found a parking space by the quay, and wandered around the town, waiting for the traffic to ease. It seemed a lively place; palm-lined squares with statues and a bustling port with huge ferries loading. A strange drum band of a dozen people, dressed in grey and white with helmets, like a cross between medieval knights and Star Wars figures, made their way along the streets with jerky automata-like movements and a terrific din, followed by a group of enthusiastic children and regarded with a mixture of puzzlement and amusement by the shopkeepers and pedestrians.
Ajaccio, Dadadang (promotion video 2015)
Bottacina, view toward Ajaccio
Hameaux de Bottacina
Friday 21 May, 1999
Ian's just called me. On our terrace there are three horses, a mother, a father and a three week old foal. They had trotted up from the steep field below us because, inevitably, the grass here will be more succulent than in their own field.
Bottacina, horses in field below apartment
The cottage or hameau is set in a verdant garden full of exotic plants - palms, cactuses, fruit trees, orange trees and many more, including flowering geraniums.There are sheep with curly horns, terrapins, exotic caged birds and a friendly dog. The place is run by a very friendly family who even suggested that we did her daughter's English homework for her. We have our own kitchen, bathroom, shower, loo and a double bedroom. Wooden shutters keep out the sun's heat, except, specially for us, it is now raining. We have a little terrace with table and chairs where we sat last night with a bottle of wine and a bag of pistachio nuts, watching the sun set behind the hills on the far side of the valley, beyond the little fields and the plain of Ajaccio where we have an excellent view of the airstrip, so could watch the planes landing and taking off along the floodlit runway in the gathering dusk about 9 pm. There are very few planes and they seem scheduled to arrive and leave about the same time. Certainly the peace of the night was not spoiled by them and it was interesting to watch them circle in from the sea to land, or roar off down the runway, straight out across the bay of Ajaccio.
It seemed incongruous waking this morning to the sound of a cuckoo and bleating sheep, and looking down onto the silent town and airport from our panoramic vantage point. All around birds sang, the vegetation is lush and verdant and the rain fell from a grey sky with mist obscuring the surrounding hills. We finished the rest of our provisions, apple juice and biscottes, played with the horses and drove to the outskirts of Ajaccio - after my experience yesterday in the rush hour I have no desire to drive through the centre again! We walked in through the rain, which had now stopped, and we are sitting on the terrace of one of the very many cafes, bars and restaurants - le Bar du Premier Consul in the rue Bonaparte beside la Fontaine des Quatre Lions in the place Foch. There is a huge canopy overhead, unnecessary today, but vital in high summer. The buildings here are old but in good repair, five storeys high, plastered in whites, yellows, pale greens and pinks with grey wooden shutters. All along the streets are tall, fern-like palm trees on sturdy straight trunks that reach up to the top storeys of the buildings and spread their foliage across the streets. They give so much shade and greenery and are quite delightful. The fountain is playing with white water splashing and cascading down while the stone lions sleep beneath the spray. The Place is surrounded by a neatly trimmed privet hedge and stone troughs containing small shrubs, ferns and flowers surround this terrace. Across the street Ian is selecting postcards.
Ajaccio, street lined with palm trees
Ajaccio, equestrian statue of Napoléon surrounded by his four brothers
Ajaccio, Fontaine des Quatre Lions
We have now gone round the corner and I'm sitting in a tiny garden outside la Maison Natale de Napoléon. It is a quiet corner with few people around. At the moment the house is closed for lunch. It is a four-storey pale orange building with grey shutters. The little garden has orange trees covered in fruit, an enormous spiky cactus, a scarlet hibiscus fanning the wall behind me and a couple of pineapple ferny palm trees. The pathway is part sanded and part laid out in decorative pebbles, and the whole garden is surrounded by wrought iron railings. In the centre is a small bust, head and shoulders; it is of the young king of Rome, Napoléon's son.
Ajaccio, Maison Bonaparte
Ajaccio, Maison Bonaparte
Ian is very excited to be here and says it's a kind of pilgrimage as Napoléon has dogged his life over the past quarter of a century, what with organising and managing the Heber Mardon collection of Napoléana in the Westcountry Studies Library, and mounting the controversial exhibition in Caen Boney, ou Napoléon vu par les anglais. He has several French language copies of the catalogue of this exhibition in his luggage and plans to give one to the museum this afternoon.
Boney, ou Napoléon vu par les anglais, exhibition catalogue, 1985
Saturday 22 May, 1999
Whilst waiting for the museum to open at 2 pm, we explored the town further, climbing up to the citadel, which turned out to be a military one, not open to the public. We discovered a little restaurant in the town with a pleasant atmosphere and several years of Routard awards displayed outside. Its set menu looked good value but on entering a very vague, surly old man waved us to any old table and disappeared, leaving us in total silence for ages. Having gazed at the shell-covered walls with maps of Corsica also picked out in shells, with large mussel shells in the centre for the mountain ranges, we decided to leave. There was no sign of anyone willing to serve and at this rate the museum would have closed for the evening before we even got there. So, out into the rain and a sploshy walk to Monoprix, where we purchased a couple of onion and sausage fougasses which we ate under the huge palm tree on the square outside the Hôtel de Ville, looked down upon by Napoléon on his plinth in the centre of the Lions Fountain.
We then entered the Hôtel de Ville to see the two rooms of Napoléana on display, only to be told it was "fermé exceptionellement". How had word reached them of our arrival? We did the hard sell and eventually persuaded them to let us in free to look at the prints, busts, medals etc - not long enough but at least it avoided our total frustration and kept us dry. Ian offered one of his catalogues for the town collections, and was met with blank astonishment - what would they want that for? They had no use for such things. If we really wanted to get rid of it, try the public library.
Feeling deflated, we returned to Napoléon's birthplace, which was now open. The staff there were very pleasant, but equally nonplussed by our gesture of generosity which made us feel even more deflated. They finally did accept a copy of the catalogue, promising to ask the archivist/curator if it was worth keeping when he arrived at the end of the month. We got the distinct impression that there is only one archivist/librarian for the entire island. Certainly any staff we met knew how to sell tickets, give change for postcards and work the photocopiers, but little else. In France professional staff in libraries are often designated as "conservateurs" and they are very thin on the ground. The staff did give us a handful of postcards, specially stamped with the name of the Museum, as a token of thanks and the Museum itself, simply laid out, was very pleasant.
We gazed in awe at the sedan chair in which Napoléon's mother Letitia Ramolino had been returned to the house at a run when she went into labour in the middle of mass at the family church. There was a severe risk that, with all the jolting Napoléon's main claim to fame would have been that he was the only emperor in the world to have been born in a sedan chair, but she made it up to the first floor, and a reproduction couch bears witness to the fact that she never made it to the bedroom - the original appears to have been stolen. As this is where Napoléon began his route to fame, we sent a postcard to our nephew Daniel in Brussels, as he is really interested in Napoléon and goes regularly to the battlefield of Waterloo to see where his imperial career ended.
The building is very simple, painted panels, bare floorboards, an amazing contrast to Versailles, just a bourgeois home in a Corsican town. There were pictures and artifacts about the whole family including the Bonaparte descendants. Most items had labels saying that they had been donated by their Imperial Highnesses the Prince and Princess Napoléon in 1997. It would appear that Louis, Prince Napoléon VI died in that year, and his son Charles, Prince Napoléon VII donated them to the Museum. There is some dispute about who is the actual claimant to the French imperial throne as, under the term of Napoléon VI's will, the title passed directly to his grandson Jean-Christophe.
We made our way to the Bibliothèque Municipale (or as many Corsicans would call it the Bibbiuteca Municipali) in the Rue Cardinal Fesch which opens straight onto the road next to the Musée Cardinal Fesch. We edged our way gingerly past the two large copulating dogs in the entrance, which were disapprovingly watched by two plaster lions, moulded from the originals by the sculptor Canova on the tomb of Pope Clement XII at St Peter's in Rome, and found ourselves in a magnificent room, shelved from floor to ceiling with old brown leather-bound volumes, with huge stepladders to reach those up near the ceiling. There were a couple of catalogues, one for the Napoléon collection and one for the general library, built up from libraries confiscated from monasteries during the French Revolution and also from the personal collection of Napoléon's uncle Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839) and others. There was nobody around, and we explored the room unobserved. We could have walked out undetected with anything - we were convinced there was no security system. There was a door at the far end, so we went through, searching for a member of staff. In that area there was a small collection of general modern material and a photocopier. A pleasant woman told us that it was a private area, and we explained that we wanted to give a book to the collection. She agreed to take it to give to the conservateur to decide whether it was worth keeping - we felt deflated once again. At neither place did they ask who we were so that they could acknowledge the gift, or in case the conservateur wished to make contact. It all seems so introspective.
Ajaccio, Bibliothèque Municipale
Returning past the dogs, still busily enjoying each other among the rare books, we went to the nearby chapel where the members of Napoléon's family are all buried - the man himself lies of course in Les Invalides in Paris. His mother has the most amazing Latin inscription on her tomb: "mother of kings". Indeed she was; self-appointed kings it's true, but Napoléon made his siblings monarchs of half of Europe.
Ajaccio, Chapelle Impériale
Ajaccio, Musée Fesch
Jérôme Bonaparte, king of Westphalia, sculpture by Joseph Bosio, 1812
We then made our way back through the town, stopping to look at the railway station and pick up a timetable as we are convinced that a railway trip through the mountains is a must. We collected some food shopping and cleared the dust of Ajaccio from our heels. By the way, there are no public toilets in the whole of Corsica. One either uses the maquis, or faces the stares of the unemployed smokers outside the bars as you scuttle through to use the one behind the counter - or you can use the ferry terminals in Ajaccio or Bastia - they have been our only options. Nor is the tap water generally considered drinkable, so every drop must be purchased.
We drove slowly out of Ajaccio in the rush hour, passing back through our village of Bottacina, and up into the mountains behind. Dry and arid peaks of granite were sticking up beyond the maquis coating the lower slopes. This was all breathtakingly beautiful, the road twisting steeply upwards, frequently turning back upon itself.
Gorges de Prunelli
Prunelli, Barrage de Tolla
We went down the far side of the col. The road surface was potholed and broken, very narrow and twisting, but fortunately we passed no traffic at that time of the evening. Then through the Gorge de Prunelli where we joined another road back to Bottacina.
We stopped and made our way through the damp fresh woods beneath the chestnut trees, following a sign to a Genoese bridge, a steep, beautifully maintained packhorse bridge with a high arch and no protective balustrade across the fast flowing, boulder-strewn little river Prunelli. It was a graceful structure with the mountains as a backdrop, the bubbling river and birds supplying the music, and the cold damp smell of the woods mixed with the aroma of many flowers beside the path making a feast for all the senses.
Pont de Zipitoli
It was so isolated and magic, yet as we returned to the car it became even more so. Arriving at a glade beneath the trees, we watched as a wild black sow trotted across the clearing followed by six or seven scampering little piglets. We had heard that they had sangliers in the mountains and we have actually been privileged to see them. On our return drive we also saw a couple of pink pigs foraging by the roadside but they looked more like the ordinary domestic variety.
Back at our little house we cooked our pizza, and sat watching the sunset and drinking wine, whilst writing postcards.
Saturday 22 May, 1999 (continued later)
We are now in a hotel in Sartène, the Hotel Rossi. It is the only place we could find and it is overpriced though okay. As it is Pentecȏte and therefore a long weekend, everywhere gets booked up. We have a garden room with a little patio area so we were able to eat our picnic supper with wine outside at a little table watching the surrounding gardens darken with the dusk.
Hameaux de Bottacina, view toward Ajaccio
Scenery near the Col de Celaccia
This morning we left Bottacina about 10 am and drove to Filitosa, one of the most important archaeological sites in Corsica. It was inhabited more or less continuously from the 9th millennium until the 3rd century BCE and the arrival of the Romans. It was a fascinating site and its setting was magnificent. It has been very hot today and it was quite sticky clambering about among the granite rocks examining the really impressive carved menhirs, complete with faces and weapons. Even the backs of the standing stones had faint traces of decoration. We explored the remains of buildings, rooms, underground storage chambers, strangely shaped granite boulders (carved or natural?) and the original quarry from where the building material originated. The whole site is the product of a Bronze Age civilization known as the Torrean culture.
Filitosa, prehistoric site
Filitosa, rock formation
Having both read Colomba before we came, we decided to visit Fozzano, the mountain village reputed to be the one used as the location for the novella by Prosper Merimée, where the buildings described still stand and there is even a Colomba buried in the churchyard. It is situated high up in beautiful mountain country about ten kilometers out of Sartène along a winding, narrow, poorly maintained road. The village itself is very pretty, magical almost with the gentle sound of the sheep bells as the flocks moved around in the steep fields below the village. All around are the mountains with tiny fields surrounding the village. Everywhere there is the scent of flowers, brilliant against the hewn granite blocks of the old buildings with their flagged passageways and steps between the different levels. Beyond, between the mountain peaks, the sun shone on the blue water of the Golfe de Valinco on which stands Propriano. It was quite possible to imagine the setting of the powerful novel of revenge, but today it all seemed so peaceful in the afternoon sun, the maquis stretching straight up from the roadside above and behind the village.
We were not to be left to dream and imagine though, as we were quickly cornered by the village eccentric. We could hardly understand him, but he was going on about Princess Diana, the Queen Mother, whether Prince Charles would become King as he was going around with a divorcee, and wasn't Margaret Thatcher wonderful! To escape, we said we were going to look at the church, but he produced the key to the church door and said that he would show us around. In fairness it was worth seeing inside. The church was filled with statues and flowers and in an excellent state of repair and without him we would never have been able to see inside. He also pointed out a Madonna and Child carved in fig tree wood reckoned to be seventeenth century and in excellent condition. It had been found washed up on the shore, presumably the figurehead from an Italian ship, and was carried by the men of Fozzano all the way up to their church. She is reputed to have performed a number of miracles.
Our self-appointed guide then decided to show us Colomba's tower and anything else he could think of to keep us from leaving. As he dragged us through the village he kept shouting to anyone and everyone that he was taking visitors to see Colomba. I felt really embarrassed, wondering how many other literary pilgrims had suffered a similar humiliation. Ian didn't appear to mind, so I left him to do the talking. We did eventually escape, but for me at least it spoiled the pleasure of the visit.
La Tour de Colomba, Fozzano
Pont de Spina Cavallu
Sunday 23 May 1999
We are now in the Hotel de la Terrace in Zonza, in the mountains up behind Ponte Vecchia on the east coast of Corsica. This morning we breakfasted on the terrace of our little garden room in Sartène, the sun already hot, before setting off for Bonifacio. Although twisting, the roads were in general wide and well surfaced. There was little traffic in evidence this Whitsunday.
Bonifacio turned out to be much nicer than we had expected. Its main industry is of course tourism, and there are restaurants, bars and pizzerias everywhere, but it adds to the colour in many ways without detracting from its historical charm.
We parked the car and walked down to the harbour which was teaming with fish of all sorts and sizes, wonderful to watch as they swam in shoals through the clear waters of the bay. Nearby was a group of Corsican dancers dressed in national costume. Many of the women wore black dresses and danced in bare feet on the searingly hot pavement. The men wore black waistcoats and hats. A group of women dressed in black sang Corsican songs in harsh voices to keep the dancers in step, and they were accompanied by men playing violins. The group appeared to be unofficial and held up a coach and a line of traffic as they danced in the road and everyone gathered around.
Bonifacio, Corsican dancers
We climbed up hundreds of steps to the old town, perched on the very edge, if not overhanging, the white limestone cliffs. Below and above the sea and sky were of an incredible blue, tumbled rocks lying at the bottom of the cliffs, others showing beneath the transparent water. Looking out to sea, hardly any distance away it seemed, although some fifteen kilometers, was the coast of Sardinia, another island, another country, another language.
Bonifacio, cliffs
Inside the city walls of Bonifacio it was wonderful. Sheer old houses, their doors wide open, showed staircases so vertical they were virtually internal ladders to reach each floor. The streets were cobbled with steps everywhere, with narrow alleyways between. Here though, unlike Sartène, the buildings were constructed from white dressed limestone and reflected a dazzling brightness. Here too restaurants and pizzerias were everywhere - I've never seen a country with so many possibilities to intake food and drink, and so few for getting rid of it afterwards! Anywhere that there was space for a parasol and a table, places were set for lunch. There seemed quite a number of local people eating out for their Sunday lunch in family groups. There was also of course, a great number of tourists adding to the happy holiday atmosphere.
There were several churches tucked among the shops and houses, their doors wide open to the sunshine, directly onto the little streets, their cool interiors very inviting, with trays of flickering candles in red glasses on either side of the altar as offerings of remembrance. Many had statues, usually polychrome wood, and dim, tarnished oil paintings of religious scenes. The atmosphere is far more Italian than French. A little elderly lady started talking to me in one of the churches and her French accent was also Italianate, and I found it very difficult to understand her. She was on a day out from Porte-Vecchio and was obviously finding the churches superb. She told me several times about one of the churches higher up in the town that had a fist-sized piece of blackened wood that was part of the True Cross of Christ. That church was closed today, she said - strange on Whitsunday - but she had been specially allowed to see it. She was obviously very fervent. I made the mistake of thanking her for telling me something so very interesting, and she immediately jumped on me for using such an understated word as "interesting" in such a context. Again she told me that she wasn't from Bonifacio and asked me which part of Corsica I was from, so my French can't have been quite as bad as I thought. She seemed to forgive my error when I said we were from England, and seemed rather taken aback. I don't know why; we saw many English people around, but perhaps they didn't chat with old ladies in churches.
We climbed up to the very top of the town to find a medieval fair in progress. Horses were tethered in the shade of a group of olive trees, straw was spread on the streets, there were archery butts (crossbow here, not your English longbow) several cannons, mercifully decorative rather than functional, and people dressed in medieval costume, the men in hose and doublet in beautiful purples and royal blues, the women with wonderfully coloured dresses and floating veils. The thick platform soled shoes of some looked rather incongruous - perhaps they were meant to be pattens. A man in purple tights and a lace collar was shovelling horse droppings off the street into an anachronistic plastic bag carried by an eight year old lad dressed as a jester in red and yellow with a hat to match with three drooping points, each with a jangling bell at the tip. There were plenty of shaded stalls lining the streets selling everything from Italian nougat, sugary almonds, sweetmeats and pastries, to hundreds of different kinds of cheeses and sausages. There were even stalls selling oriental carpets, local pewter-ware and Italian carved wooden tables. We were offered samples of all kinds of foodstuffs with no pressure to buy. Free glasses of honey wine, mead perhaps, were handed out, and we wandered to try at random proffered samples of nougat, sausages, cheese etc - all of it delicious, and the people very friendly. One man told us that he didn't mind if we didn't buy anything, but he'd be very offended if we didn't eat the sweets he was offering to us. All this at the very top of the most southerly town on Corsica with the blue sea and Sardinia visible with a turn of the head. One woman selling nougat said that she came from Sardinia, and had travelled over on the ferry with her produce specially for today.
Eventually the heat forced us down. We descended steep, uneven, narrow stone staircases we discovered built inside the actual ramparts of the town. Inside it was cool and out of the sun's glare, being stone vaulted with little openings all the way down, offering views out over the town or the sea. As we reached the lower levels, the steps became a tunnel hewn directly from the rock on which the ramparts had been built.
Back at the port, we bought Italian ices and sat on a shaded terrace to eat them while waiters rushed back and forth with trays of seafood for the lunches of diners who preferred the sunny heat at the water's edge across the street where tables had been set up, each with a little parasol. Then we made use of the rarely to be found clean facilities, before returning to our car and reluctantly leaving Bonifacio behind.
Next stop was Porte-Vecchio, where our friends Peter and Kate once stayed, so we sent them a postcard as a reminder. We parked by the port, not a lot there, and climbed in the hot sunshine up into the old town, a pleasant little place, built from granite with narrow streets layered one above the other running around the hilltop site inside the Genoese gateway. An attractive place, although without many major sites. I think it is the hinterland that makes it such a delightful holiday location.
We drove out of Porte-Vecchio, up along the winding route into the mountains towards Zonza. The route was reasonably wide although it could be bumpy and poorly maintained, crumbling and potholed in places. We ascended steadily through superb scenery, pulling in to look down onto the blue Golfe de Porte-Vecchio and the little town far below. The maquis surrounded us, making us feel that we were threading our way through a garantuan granite rockery. There had obviously been fires here in places fairly recently, and although the shrubs and undergrowth had regrown, there were gnarled and blackened trees with their dead branches projecting above the verdant hillside covering.
As we continued upward, we were forced to the edge of the road by a cavalcade of cars coming down the centre of the road, their headlights on, horns blaring, gesticulating to me to get off the road. On the roof of the first was a banner declaring it to be the cycling Tour de Corse - more like a tour de force, given the challenging routes. Anyway, we crushed against the inside edge of the road and waited, along with several other cars who tucked in behind us. More horns blaring announced the first wave of lycra-clad, helmeted young men who shot past with intense expressions, relieved no doubt to be going downhill again after having climbed to the top of the col on the far side. They were going right down the centre of the road, ignoring whether anyone was round the bend. Each wave of half a dozen bikes was followed by a convoy of five or six vehicles, their Corsican passengers making the most of the opportunity to create as much racket and din in the mountains as they could, all waving at us to stay off the road. Nobody however tells you when they have all passed, so we sat there like lemons, but eventually, with no more in sight, we set off cautiously, only to meet a few latecomers hurtling round the bend, unaccompanied by noise as their supporters had given up on them, and gone off to do something more interesting.
Straggling cyclists on the Tour de Corse, Forêt de l'Ospédale
So we continued on our upward route, taking every bend with even more caution, the occasional cyclist hurtling past. The air was cooler but still close. Suddenly there was an enormous roar and crash of thunder, really loud in the mountains, and at the same moment almost the sky deluged us and in seconds the road was a running torrent. We rushed to shut the car windows and roof vent and again hugged the side of the road. It would have been impossible to drive as visibility was reduced to zero.
Such intense storms do not last long, so we soon moved on in a more gentle rain, pausing by a lakeside, but deciding it was too wet to explore. Then up toward the col known as the Bocca d'Illarata where we stopped and walked through the pine trees to a granite outcrop, and searched for the Cascade de Piscia di Gallo, which we didn't find - why would a waterfall be at the top anyway, where water wouldn't gather? It must have been quite a walk away, but as it was 6 pm, raining, and we had no idea if we would find accommodation in Zonza, we decided to press on. The scenery though was magnificent, more like the Jura but in pink porphyritic granite. Here we were at the level of pine trees, though all round the crags flowers were still blooming in profusion.
Scenery in the Forêt de Baroccaggio Marghèse
Finally we reached Zonza and found this little hotel and the only room left, costing 170 francs a night but having to share the bathroom and shower with one other room. Otherwise it's clean and comfortable, with a very pleasant patron who said that if everyone in England spoke French as well as we do, he'd go there for his holidays, but as he couldn't speak English, he wouldn't dare! Our heads are really swollen now - two compliments in one day!
We explored the village, situated at an altitude of about 800 meters, and watched the dusk gather over the mountains and a thick mass of white mist fill the valley below us. The village is full of dogs, mostly elderly and bedraggled, but once one starts to bark, they all do. One lady in the street put her fingers to her ears and exclaimed to us about the "orchestre des chiens". We named them the Zonza Dog Doo-Dah Band, a name inspired by the long-lived (but now, in 2022, defunct) Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
We ate supper in the hotel, the plat du jour wild sanglier with gnocchi - we simply had to go native. It doesn't taste at all like pork, being a much darker, more gamy meat, and I felt guilty eating it, but must confess that it was delicious. I just hope that it wasn't the black sow with the row of little brown piglets that we saw the other day. It was well matched by a carafe of house wine for 25 francs and we were served by the son of the patron. It was all lovely, with real roses on our table and a damask cloth.
Then a final walk around the village, where Ian phoned his mother and also our daughter Kate, to whom he pretended to he was a Corsican bandit holding her parents hostage and demanding an extortionate ransom for our release. His French accent wasn't good enough as her reply was "Hi, Dad, have you been drinking?"
1. Bastia to Porto.2. Porto to Zonza.
3. Zonza to Corte.
4. Corte to Bastia.
