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** CORSICA -SARDINIA 2009 - Weeks 8~10 ** |
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 CORSICA 2009 - SOUTHERN AND WESTERN CORSICA:
Founded by a Tuscan noble in 828 AD and
disputed over by the major powers of the day, Bonifacio finally fell to the
Genoese; trading privileges enabled the town to flourish almost as an autonomous
republic. With the French take-over of Corsica in the 18th century,
Newly arrived in France, albeit this remote and still rather alien corner of France, after seven weeks of Italian Sardinia, it took several days to overcome the bewildering culture shock: shopping amid the typically French ambiance of a Leclerks supermarket was both familiar yet unfamiliar. And at our first campsite, the small 2 star Camping Cupulatta near to Porto Vecchio, the warden's heavily accented French seemed unintelligible; if this was Corsican French, we should have more difficulty than with Sardinian Italian. Our second day in SE Corsica gave opportunity
for one of our shared interest ventures, to find our first Corsican
archaeological site amid the botanical splendour of the maquis-covered
hillsides. The tall maquis scrubland up though which we climbed seemed to have a
different mix of shrubs from the equivalent Sardinian macchia, and certainly a
distinctive, almost
Our final night in the SE was spent at the unpretentious but delightful two-star Camping la Trinità, one of those campsites offering a cordial welcome to those looking to enjoy camping rather than the regrettable trend here of making a quick buck from holiday-makers shoe-horned into serried rows of chalets. The grounds were well-cared for, with enough trees to provide shade without being oppressive; the facilities were good and price reasonable - such a welcome change from what we regrettably came to expect on both islands. Corsica is a severely mountainous island and
road standards are far less good than Sardinia. Two further factors however
compound the inherent stress of constant mountain driving:
The RN196 road northwards to Sartène climbs seriously, winding around the maquis-covered hills and pink granite outcrops. Just before Sartène, we turned off onto a minor road which dropped steeply into a narrow valley with surrounding hillsides planted with vines. Our reason for this diversion was to find the Alignments of Palaggiu, the largest assembly of menhirs (standing stones) in Corsica dating from 1,800 BC. 1 kms' walk from the road, we found the alignments, 258 menhirs standing in rows amid the maquis, their origins as mysteriously unknown as their purpose. This remote setting amid the characteristic fragrance of the maquis scrub added to the stones' air of mystery (Photo 7 - Alignment de Palaggiu standing stones amid the maquis).
A glance at the map with the serpentine network of lanes around the Alta Rocca interior north-east of Sartène reveals the severely mountainous terrain of this region. No wonder these isolated mountains had traditionally harboured bandits and fugitives from the rule of law and vendetta feuds. We ventured up as far as the village of Sainte Lucie de Tallano which in itself was a challenging climb given the three combined adverse driving factors mentioned earlier. Looking over the rooftops of Sainte Lucie from above shows the village's lofty location perched high on a spur above the Rizzanese valley (Photo 9 - Rooftops of Sainte Lucie de Tallano in Alta Rocca hills). A return to the coast and 12kms of
nerve-wracking narrow corniche road brought us to the tiny settlement of
Campomoro and the welcoming Camping Les Roseaux; terraced up the hillside, its
pitches set amid shady trees and flowering shrubs, this was a delightfully
restful campsite. From here, we followed the well-defined coastal The continuing road north led through Propriano, a singularly unattractive town with nothing to detain visitors but the ATM and supermarket, unless tacky souvenir shops and overpriced restaurants are your thing. It says something about Propriano, a place notorious for corrupt offialdom and mafia associations, that the post-office has been bombed four times by fanatical Corsican nationalists and the town's mayor imprisoned for embezzlement. Gladly we moved on around the northern shore of the Golfe of Valinco where the straightforward Camping Abbartello gave us a shady base for a couple of days. Towards the end of May this year, temperatures in Corsica rose into the 30°s, levels more associated with mid-summer, and shade became a prime consideration for campsites. Along with pleasant shade, this welcoming campsite had the additional feature of being within walking distance of a beautiful wild beach, a mini-market for morning baguettes, and bars for evening beers - ideal really! Nearby just into the Tavaro valley was
Corsica's prime archaeological site of Filitosa. Settled originally from 6,000
BC by Neolithic farming folk, little is known of these early settlers,
The road north entailed crossing more high
ground with the D302 minor road twisting and turning every-which-way as it
meandered around the contours, gaining height determinedly; despite absence of
side-protection, the exposure was not too severe. At the watershed Col de
Bellevalle, the road ahead fell away abruptly with sweeping views across the
forested mountain slopes to the distant Golfe d' Ajaccio with the provincial
capital city spread across its northern shoreline. Reaching valley bottom, we
spent a couple of days at the peaceful Before turning into Ajaccio, we ventured inland to the mountain village of Bastelica above the Gorges of Prunelli and set at 800m on the slopes of Monte Renoso. Bastelica has remained a hotbed of Corsican nationalism which flared into violent clashes with the French authorities in the 1980s. Today, leaving aside the links with organised crime and protection rackets, the full extent of the FLNC's (Fronte di Liberazione Nazionale di a Corsica) political activity seems limited to vandalising road signs, pointlessly puerile games played by those whom most Corsicans regard as an irrelevant lunatic fringe.
Like most modern cities, Ajaccio is plagued by
traffic, but Camping les Mimosas made a welcoming base for our stay. We had no
interest in the city itself, rather the wildly impressive coastline out to the
west beyond the ever-expanding concrete resortsville along the shore of the
Golfe. The high headland of Punt della Paratu, crowned with its Genoese watch-
Thankful to be leaving the traffic-polluted
environs of Ajaccio, we continued our northward journey over more high ground;
the D81 road climbed steadily into the wild hills, twisting around heads of
side-valleys amid outcrops of pink granite. Beyond the highpoint of Col de San
Bastiano, the road descended in sweeping curves to the holiday home-lined shores
of the Golfe de la Liscia and the unremarkable little resort of Sagone. From a
corniche
Beyond Cargèse, more climbing with the road
sweeping in an endless series of bends up to the Col of San Martino. A steep
descent from here led down to the village of Piana huddled on a belvedere at 438m
overlooking the Golfe de Porto. Our campsite, set down by the wild Plage d'Arone,
was approached by an unnervingly unprotected and narrow corniche road North of Piana, the ongoing narrow road threads its way through the most extraordinary natural setting of Les Calanche. Shelved bravely across the shattered and weathered face of the mountainous massif, the road weaves an unbelievable course through a wonderland of red porphyry crags, fantastically shaped rocks, soaring pinnacles and towering overhangs, while on the outer side, the wooded mountain face dotted with Corsican pines falls dramatically sheer into ravines and chasms down to the sea way below. The porphyry rock glows an indescribable bright salmon pink in sunlight, and walking back up the gorge, you stare in amazement at both the extraordinary natural beauty, the monumental rock scenery and formations of Les Calanche, and the phenomenal feat of engineering which grafted this shelf-road onto the mountain face (Photo 16 - Weathered pinnacles and crags of Les Calanche). This was a fitting climax to the first half of our time in Corsica, and more than offset memories of some pretty mediocre and unduly expensive campsites and inhospitably aggressive Corsican driving standards. Our final period in Corsica continues around the NW coast to Calvi in the north, inland to the high mountain valleys under Monte Cinto and the heart of Corsica at Corte, and down to the east coast. Follow our continuing reports in a couple of weeks or so.
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Approaching Bonifacio on the ferry from
Sardinia, you are left wondering where the harbour is; all you can see are the
tall medieval houses of Bonifacio's haute ville perched atop the striated
limestone cliffs which stretch the length of this southern coast of Corsica.
It's only when the ferry swings around into the narrow fjord-like entrance into
the natural harbour tucked away behind the high spit of land on which Bonifacio
is perched that all becomes clear. This peculiar setting could well fit the
description given in Homer's Odyssey: 'An excellent harbour, closed in on all
sides by an unbroken ring of cliffs, with two bold headlands facing each other
at the mouth leaving only a narrow channel in between'. We could have been
aboard one of Odysseus' ill-fated ships rather than the Moby line ferry as it
squeezed into dock beneath the town's fortifications towering overhead; we half
expected to look up and see fearsome natives lining the cliff tops overhead.
Bonifacio's
commercial fortunes went into decline, until late 20th century tourism again
brought revival; and judging by the numbers of weekend visitors and the prices
charges by restaurants and car parks, Bonifacio's fortunes are again on the up.
From the harbour side, the monumental ramparts of the medieval fortifications
dominate the skyline (Photo 1 -
Medieval
Bastion towering over Bonifacio harbour). Viewed from the belvedere on
the seaward side, the tall Genoese houses of the old town perched precariously
atop the crumbling overhang of the limestone cliffs seem about to topple over
the edge into the sea below (Photo 2 - Bonifacio old town
perched on cliff-tops). The narrow lanes and tall
fortress-like houses of the haute ville reveal Bonifacio's turbulent history,
and its entire topography simply defies belief. Equally impressive is the walk
out along the maquis-covered cliff tops with the striated limestone cliffs
stretching away towards the lighthouse at Capo Pertusato (Photo 3 - Limestone cliffs at
Capo Pertusato).
incense-like fragrance (Photo
4 -
Walking amid the fragrant Corsican maquis).
The most profuse flowering shrubs were pink and white cistus (Photo 5 - White Cistus
- Cistus
monspenliensis). A gruellingly steep climb up through
the maquis brought us to the scanty remains of the Casteddu d'Araggiu, a
tower-fortress complex built around 1,500 BC at 800 feet on a pink granite spur
looking out over the maquis-covered slopes down to the Gulf of Porto Vecchio (Photo 6 - Tower-fortress of Casteddu
d'Araggiu). The Bronze Age Torréen culture takes
its name from these stone tower complexes; these invaders from the eastern
Mediterranean occupied southern Corsica bringing
bronze-working skills like the contemporary Nuraghic peoples of Sardinia.
But having seen the superbly sophisticated nuraghi in Sardinia, the poorly
preserved tumbled-down remains of the Torréen torri were something of an
anti-climax. Perhaps these early Corsicans did not have the same standards of
constructional techniques as the Nuraghic peoples across the water in Sardinia,
or perhaps they had not had the benefit of tuition in monumental building skills
by Mycenaean Greeks. Our reward for the hot gruelling climb was our first taste
of Pietra, a native Corsican beer flavoured with chestnut flour making it a
distinctively nutty flavoured amber-coloured beer.
once off main RN
routes, roads are narrow with little by way of side-protection, unnerving around
corniche roads with severe exposure on the outer side. The second factor frankly
is intolerant and aggressive Corsican driving standards, particularly the
intimidating habit of speeding around blind bends half-way across the already
narrow road. The three factors combine to make driving in Corsica some of the
most wearying in Europe.
The winding, twisting road shown on the map
gave foretaste of Sartène's mountainous setting. From medieval times, this
isolated town had been the power-base of feudal lords whose rule had transformed
it into a centre of discontent against Genoese rule and asylum for fugitives
from the law of the state. Bloody vendettas in the 19th century gave Sartène its
reputation for isolationist violence, and its legacy of tall, grim fortress-like
dwellings, places of refuge against lawlessness. The heart of the old town
behind the central square is a warren of medieval alleyways, with forbidding
grey granite houses towering overhead. Sartène has been dubbed 'the most
Corsican of Corsican towns', whether for its implacable mountainous setting or
its history of vendettas and violence, but this unwelcoming isolationist aura
still seems to pervade the place (Photo 8 - Sartène, grimly the
'Most Corsican of Corsican towns').
path around
the Campomoro headland, capped with its Genoese watch-tower, and along the wild,
rocky shoreline (Photo 10 - Genoese watchtower
overlooking Campomoro coastal path). The path threaded a
way among the weathered pink granite boulders, and the warm sun seemed to
heighten the maquis' characteristic scent of juniper. With just the sound of the
gentle surf and the fragrance of the maquis for company, who could ask for more?
but
around 3,000 BC they were colonised by newcomers who introduced the practice of
raising megalithic standing stones. Over time, these menhirs became more
sophisticated, engraved with stylised human features and later even swords and
daggers. Around the late 2nd millennium BC, more warlike invaders arrived from
the east to occupy south Corsica; these were the Torréens, named after their
tower-fortresses (torri) which we had seen earlier. And they brought with them a
new and deadly technology - smelting and casting bronze to create weapons
irresistible to the flint and obsidian arrowheads of the late Neolithic
indigenous peoples. The elaborate statue-menhirs discovered at Filitosa, with
their unique engraved human features and swords may have been set up by the
earlier settlers as symbolic representations of these deadly invaders intended
to deter. But the magic failed to work: its power was no match for the bronze
weapons of the invading Torréens who destroyed the Filitosa site, smashing the
menhir-statues and the magic they had betokened, and incorporating the stone
fragments into the tower-complex which they built over the destroyed remains of
Neolithic Filitosa. This extraordinary site remained undiscovered until 1948
when the landowner, extracting stone for wall-building, discovered with
amazement that some of the conveniently flat stones were carved with human
features; these were the broken remains of the menhir-statues, destroyed around
1,300 BC by the invading bronze-clad Torréens. Layer upon layer, Filitosa when
excavated revealed this fascinating period of prehistory, and the site has been
restored to show the menhir-statues in something resembling their original
setting. Whether archaeology is your thing or not, a visit to Filitosa is a
must, both for the site's natural beauty and its haunting atmosphere, but
particularly to see these remarkable pieces of European expressive human artwork
from 3,000 years ago (Photo 11 - Statue-menhirs at
Filitosa Bronze age sanctuary).
haven of Camping la Vallée close to the wild beach of Verghia on the southern
arm of the Golfe. A straightforward campsite with shady trees, it was a welcome
base for walking the local trails through maquis and cork-oak woods. It was here
that we experienced the most extraordinary coincidence: last autumn at a
similarly remote campsite in the Slovakian hills, we had met a Dutch couple with
whom we shared travelling experiences. A Dutch VW Camper arrived at la Vallée,
and we recognised it as the same couple; what level of odds would you put on
such a chance meeting?
tower
marked the end of the road, and just offshore the Îles Sanguinaires stood out
like sentries; their name is said to derive from the blood-red hue of their
rocks when lit by the setting sun (Photo 12 - Îles Sanguinaires and
Punta della Paratu near Ajaccio). In hot sun, we spent a
satisfying afternoon walking the coastal path among the maquis and pink granite
outcrops. A brisk breeze off the sea drove a high swell onto the rocks with huge breakers crashing onto the shore (Photo 13 -
Wild seascape on Punta della
Parata coastal path). The path rose
high over headlands giving glorious views along this magnificent wild coastline
(Photo 14 - Wild
coastline of Punta della Parata).
beyond here, we could look across the magnificently turquoise waters of a small
bay to the village of Cargèse perched on its headland opposite. Cargèse has a
fascinating history: most of its inhabitants are descended from Greek refugees
who were settled here in 1676 by the Genoese as part of their policy of diluting
Corsican nationalist sentiment by implanting colonies of foreigners. 730 Geeks,
fleeing a destructive inter-clan vendetta in the Mani of southern Peloponnese
settled here, you might say a somewhat ironically unwise choice of new homeland
given that Corsica was also riven with internecine vendettas. The Genoese levied
protection moneys from the Greeks to defend them against native Corsican
hostility towards the newcomers, another irony given the modern-day Corsican
nationalist links with mafia protection rackets. The Greeks had a rough time
from Corsican antagonism, but during the 19th century an uneasy coexistence
emerged between the two opposing communities who each built their own churches
on hillocks facing one another across the valley. Some 300 Greek families still
live in Cargèse, the blue and white Greek flag flies over the houses, and the
local priest uniquely is licensed by papal decree to pronounce both the Roman
Catholic and Greek Orthodox mass in the village's two churches (Photo
15 - Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches at Cargèse). It was sheer
delight to wander through the sleepy village with its pastel coloured houses and
flower-filled gardens, all bright with fig trees, bougainvillea and cycad-palms.
high
above the gulf, but with superb views of the rocky coastline and massive
headland of Capo Rosso. We had high hopes of this campsite, but after our
hair-raising drive down, discovered that so also did half the holiday-making
population of Northern Europe, shoe-horned in with all their intrusive D-K-R
noise (dogs, kids and radios). We eventually found a peaceful corner and tucked
ourselves under the olive trees for shade from the now fearsomely hot sun. It
was so noticeable now how suddenly the countryside had rapidly turned from
green to brown; grass and undergrowth were now tinder dry and one could
understand the paranoia about fire risk.
