Corsica 2025
Arrividerci Sardinia, Bonjour Corsica
We arrive in the port town of Santa Teresa Gallura with modest expectations, island ferry port towns are sometimes low key affairs which don’t score highly on the attractive scale. Not so Santa Teresa where we are pleasantly surprised to the point of amazed as we turn from a quiet street into the main piazza where gentle soul music issues from one bar and 70s disco from another in as welcoming a scene as you could wish to encounter.
Numerous restaurants line several of the streets leading away from the square, chatter and laughter fill the air and the ambience is one of casual enjoyment, there is truly a feeling of chill, albeit perhaps slightly upmarket chill. Menu prices, to our surprise given our modest expectations, reflect this – everything seems a euro or five more than previous towns.
In fact there’s something of a micro economy in Santa Teresa, a town where you are charged one euro PER DRINK for the privilege of sitting at a table, and a town where you can only enter the public beach by making a reservation in advance, then paying 3.50 entry fee plus 6 more euros for the obligatory raffia mat to go under your towel. It is, remarkably, forbidden to place your own towel directly on the sand. So 9.50 euros per person to go on the beach. No thank you Santa Teresa!
In its defence though, Santa Teresa Gallura is very clean and the food, in our limited experience, good enough to at least not feel too much of a rip off at these increased prices. Storm clouds gather over our two days here, humidity levels rise and the sun for the most part hides behind a thick cloud covering. And so we leave Sardinia, bound for Corsica on the blue and white Moby ferry heading for the white cliffs of Bonifacio.
Approaching Bonifacio by boat is pretty amazing, the town clutching the very edge of the lofty cliffs, city walls equally precarious, remains of the castle heading the view. Inside the city walls the tiny streets bustle with many visitors but the whole place oozes interest and photographic prompts. The shift from Italian to French is unmistakable – we thought the cuisine change might be more subtle, but the menus demonstrate complete revision for the sake of a short stretch of water. Unfortunately we ourselves haven’t made the switch quite so easily and we’re still all grazie and bongiorno when we should be merci and bonjour. D’oh.
Named after Boniface II of Tuscany who constructed the impressive fortress and thus enabled the town to grow, Bonifacio has at different times come under the power of many, ranging from the Spanish Moors to the Papacy. A significant section of the town is the citadel within the walls – walls which form towering defences on the already sheer cliffs.
After a period of Genoese rule which oversaw a lengthy period of uprising and peasants’ revolts, Corsica was ceded to France in 1768 as a thank you for French help in quelling the unrest – though how about this for a fascinating fact…Bonifacio is closer to TWENTY other capital cities than it is to Paris. As claims to fame go, that’s a pretty good one, though the fact that Bonifacio was until recently a major administrative centre for the French Foreign Legion runs it a close second.
With only a week to explore Corsica we collect our next rental car and choose our destinations carefully, heading first northwards along the west coast through magnificent scenery destined for somewhere truly spectacular.
A modicum of research into the island of Corsica reveals that one of its delights is spectacular drives through stunning scenery, so we plan our journey here to take in some of these. Happily, the final section of our initial drive is one of the top five widely recommended, though we are already taken in by the magnificent scenery and pretty villages long before we hit that section.
The renowned 12-kilometre stretch (sounds short, takes ages) starts at the ridiculously attractive village of Piana and runs to our next base, Porto Ota. To say that we are enchanted by what we see on this drive is a massive understatement, this is an incredibly stunning, unique stretch of coastline which is nothing short of mind blowing.
Known as the Calanques (or Calanches) de Piana, the area basks in the most spectacular colouring: cliffs which range from pink to red, enchanting shades of greenery, hints of autumn colours in the leaves of thousands of chestnut trees, all backed of course by the deep blue Med. Every time we stop to admire and swoon at another amazing view, the scent in the air is akin to walking in to an alternative medicine clinic, so heavy are the perfumes of mountain herbs.
Eucalyptus, something that smells like mountain thyme, and another scent which we recognise but can’t quite identify, bring an instant karma to accompany the sensational views. Maybe I should stop writing and let Michaela’s photographs do the talking….
Calanques, in this case volcanic, are created when caves collapse to form gulleys and valleys; the unique pink-red colouring of the rocks here was formed when the limestone rock became permeated by hematite, which is dehydrated iron oxide. We only know all this from Wikipedia – if you see something this unusual, you have to look it up!
And so we arrive in Porto Ota and are delighted with our next base. It may be a mostly newly built village to accommodate visitors like us, but the development is understated and sympathetic, no hotel has more than 20-odd rooms and nothing is above a modest height. Moreover, the village is built predominantly from local stone and somehow conveys the perfect “mountain village” vibe despite being by the sea. It’s actually lovely despite its youthfulness and we commend its designers and architects.
In our short time in Porto Ota, we are to return to Piana and to the Calanques, spend time simply sitting watching the sea crash over the rocks in the village, and enjoy the heady combination of fabulous food in a terrific setting.
What we don’t get is a boat trip to see the Calanques from a different angle: once again, all boat trips are suspended due to the winds. It’s become a theme on this trip, but here in Porto Ota it’s more than compensated for by the mesmerising glory of the crashing waves.
We could easily stay another day in these lovely surroundings, but there’s more of those spectacular drives to do, more of Corsica to see.
Amazed By Corsica: Porto Ota-Calvi-Asco-Bastia
With Corsica boasting five scenic drives each reputed to be breathtaking we have planned to follow at least three of them during our stay on the island, so having had two days to explore the amazing Calanques de Piana we build a second spectacular drive into our journey to our next base. Corsica is very much more mountainous than we knew, these are proper mountain roads with narrow twists and turns, precipitous drops and sometimes unforgiving rock on each side. They are an absolute joy to drive but require maximum vigilance too.
This one is a 22 kilometre drive from Porto Ota to the picturesque mountain village of Evisa, a route with all of those attributes and qualities and all of those dangers. In our days here we have seen the remains of crashed cars hundreds of feet down the mountainside, wrecked cars left to rot in passing places, and floral tributes to those who presumably didn’t heed the warnings. These roads demand respect.
It’s galling therefore when our “under inflated tyre” warning light flicks on somewhere on a narrow pass miles from anywhere, choosing its moment carefully so as to cause as much distress as possible. As we are soon to discover, there are no tyre services in a small town like Evisa and, knowing our rental car is not equipped with a spare wheel, we wander the village, grab a quick coffee then soon creep back to Porto Ota with fingers crossed and palms a bit sweaty. The machine at the gas station shows no sign of a problem, saying all tyres are fine, but the dashboard is telling a different story. Over the stone bridge, the old woman at the auto shop says they’re closed till 2pm, and to come back in an hour.
2:05pm the door opens and a guy who looks about ninety years old shuffles down the steps, opens the workshop doors and puts great effort into steadfastly ignoring the fact that we are there. I explain the problem in my best French. His response is gruff, impassive and accented, but I catch the words “non”, “mechanique” and “demain”, none of which are what we wanted to hear. It’s back to crossed fingers and sweaty palms and a 90-minute drive on spectacular roads to our next base at Calvi. We stop regularly for views and photographs and each time we do so, the tyres look fine. We’re growing more confident.
After settling into Calvi we head next morning to a tyre shop down the road. He checks all four and finds everything fine, just like we did yesterday. Except he now gets in the car and does techie type things with the touch screen and within seconds he’s smiling and satisfied. The warning light has gone off. “Pas de probleme avec les pneus”, he explains, “la probleme est le computer”. Now that’s something I can relate to in any language.
We can’t believe we’ve never heard of Calvi before as a recognised holiday destination, because in terms of a standard two week getaway place it has everything you could ever want: great location, superb food, an ancient citadel, quaint centre, an attractive waterfront and white sand beaches which stretch some six kilometres along the coast, starting right in the town. The beaches really are idyllic, that white sand being lapped by crystal clear, gentle waves and fringed by verdant pine and chestnut trees. There’s even a short railway running 45 minutes along the coast from Calvi to Ile Rousse, a journey of stunning views which bring home just how many beautiful quiet beaches there are along this stretch.
This section of coastline is so lovely that, as we say, it’s hard to believe we don’t already know about it. Most visitors here seem to be from mainland France with a smattering of Germans – maybe Calvi hasn’t targeted the British holiday market. We also have to mention our accommodation here, which is great fun, on an old school campsite where camper vans and tents outnumber lodges by about two to one.
Our great little pad is a pod of timber construction with spacious veranda, down a track from the campsite’s pool, shop and cafe which all remind us of holidays decades ago. It’s years since either of us stayed anywhere like this and we find it hugely enjoyable, perhaps to our surprise. We almost feel reluctant to move on, so comfortable is our little wooden home.
And so to the last of those spectacular drives, and this one is no less magnificent than the others, possibly even pips them in the gobsmack department. Eastwards and then inland from Calvi, along sumptuous coastlines and up into the mountains towards the section which gives this drive its reputation, the Asco Gorge. The village of Asco is beautiful in its own right but the gorge is unbelievably spectacular: enchanting, dramatic and constantly surprising. Each twist and turn brings more gasps of disbelief. It’s an amazing, stunning drive through incredible scenery.
Beyond Asco village we park up and head on foot down the steep track into the valley bottom where an ancient stone bridge spans the water with character and style. This picturesque bridge – the Ponte Génois d’Asco – is around 600 years old, constructed by the Genoese in the fifteenth century, and creates a beautiful, peaceful scene on the babbling river.
It’s fair to say that we are seriously impressed by Corsica, particularly this northern section. A week hasn’t been long enough to do full justice to this wonderful and dramatic island which is so much more mountainous and spectacular than we had ever imagined. Truly, we had no idea it was such an amazing island. Maybe we’ll be back for more.
But for now, that’s it. Our final drive is from Asco to Bastia where we once again bid farewell to the rental car, enjoy a meal at a restaurant by the port and bed down for our last night on Corsica. Tuesday comes and it’s an early start, today we have not just an early ferry to catch from Bastia to Livorno on the Italian mainland, but also a succession of train journeys which will take us to our next destination.
Tuscany awaits. We’re heading to Siena.
