Month: April 2025

Corsica Road Trip part 8

Posted on April 11, 2025April 11, 2025 by SteveH

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Corte is all about independent Corsica and Pascal Paoli (and the university). But there was also General JP Gaffori who gets a statue on the main square. My Corsica Road Trip nears it’s conclusion. If you are doing a Corsica road trip this is the place to park up and explore the hills, valleys and mountains that make up the heart of the island. I will share a few images of the town which is an impressive centre of culture and natural beauty.

I zigzagged around the narrow streets and climbed my way slowly but surely up to the citadel and the belvedere.

Lunch and the river walk

Back to the town centre before a walk along the river Tavignanu, which is quite small here. But first time to have a classic Corsican dinner. At the restaurant Terra Nova the set meal gives me a chance to taste brocciu. A cheese made from ewe’s milk and whey. It’s everywhere. Start with cheese fritters, then cannelloni, and fiadone to finish. Fiadone is a local cheesecake. Every dish had brocciu in it. The food was very good, but I won’t be eating brocciu in that quantity again.

That’s the end of Part 8 of my Corsica Road Trip, and the end of the vacation. Tomorrow I will head back to Bastia to fly home. It has been a wonderful vacation and like all places that are spectacular beautiful and interesting it’s really difficult to definitively pick the best bit. One thing is certain I shouldn’t have waited so long to visit.

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Corsica Road Trip part 7

Posted on April 7, 2025April 11, 2025 by SteveH

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

I’m now on day 9 of my Corsica Road Trip, and Part 7 of this blog is going to cover days 9 and 10. It’s time to start heading north up the east coast of Corsica. The south is covered with beautiful and quite busy glorious beaches. This is not my style of beach as you may have noticed.

Porto-Novo

I still wanted to take in some of the beautiful beaches on the south coast of Corsica. So I started by heading to Sperone point. In fact I was disappointed. It’s a ferry port, on a tiny scale, for the nearby islands. So I set about defining a list of candidate beaches but they all seem to have a common theme, beautiful, busy and hard to park. Of course here in the south there are paid car parks to make it easier but they often still leave you with 1-2km to walk to the beach. I chose a different tack. I drove towards Plage de Porto-Novo. This was described as quiet, beautiful with no cafes etc etc. Sounds great, however it’s a 3km walk from the road. And there’s no car park. I was delighted – it could be my best beach ever. It is SO close to Santa Giulia too. In the end I spent plenty of time here and then bit the bullet to visit one of the “real” ones – the beach at Palombaggia. Which like all the others was busy, nice and expensive.

Porto-Vecchio

I’m sleeping in Porto-Vecchio tonight. With its big natural bay there are boats everywhere. It has a huge citadel with a different look and feel to the others I have visited. It’s not a very photogenic town. It’s split on 2 levels with the Upper town centred around the citadel and the lower town with its port. A free bus runs around the town all day and I recommend it. I preferred the atmosphere of the upper town.

Piscines Naturelles De Cavu

After a good night’s sleep, the main tasks today are driving to Corte and finding nice things to visit on the way. I have picked the Piscines on Cavu to start the day, before it gets too hot. The idea is you take the bus, walk up the road or, as I did walk up the river bed to some natural pools. Walking up the river started easy with little yellow marks to indicate the path but they soon disappeared. So everyone doing this walk is basically making it up as they go along. It is a very popular place, lots of car parks (paid), and other activities for families. Definitely did some “on all fours” hiking again. The final picture gives you an idea of how busy it was out of season and I think my impression was that it was busier than that but I have a habit of cutting people out of the image when I take a photo.

I have to say it was an exceptional day out. Well worth it and the number of photos testifies to the beauty of the place.

Tarco

I know I should be swimming in the rivers, but I had my camera and I wasn’t brave enough to leave that. So I continued my journey which took me back to the coast. I stopped at a random beach, with a small free car park, and didn’t regret it. There were fish everywhere. I also liked the flowers. Welcome to Tarco.

That’s the end of Part 7 of my Corsica Road Trip, Part 8 will take us inland to Corte.

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Corsica Road Trip Part 6

Posted on April 2, 2025April 7, 2025 by SteveH

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

The town of Bonifacio is near the southern tip of the Corsica. I’m making this a 2 day stop as part of my Corsica road trip. When I do a long road trip I think I deserve a day off.

Bonifacio

I am staying in the haute ville, upper town, so that’s what I’m going to visit first. Plenty of churches so I’ll do a couple. It might be the prettier part of the island but it’s certainly more expensive. Some very famous landmarks make Bonifacio a must visit town, in particular there’s the Escalier du Roy d’Aragon. A stone staircase which goes down the cliff. One of its uses was to get fresh water for the military but deemed to risky so they made deep wells later. You can visit it, but there’s no way I’m paying to walk down and back up with a hard hat. I’ll get a photo it from the southern tip of the island which is what I really want to see.

Capo Pertusato

The Capo Pertusato is the southern tip of Corsica and is an extremely beautiful limestone environment. I recommend getting here early and I just went just for the walk, but people come here to spend the day at the isolated beach. It’s about 5km from the town and the most challenging walk I’ve done. You can see Sardinia in the background. There’s the military base, and lighthouse. I walked over the natural arch. There’s thepromised photo of the Escalier du Roy d’Aragon looking back to the town.