BASTIA
01 – 04 October 2022
Mapping our route around Corsica, we had stuck mostly to the coast, picturing a beach holiday and visiting most of the main cities which must have been built around the commercially-necessary ports.
The exception was our final leg back to Bastia where we would be traversing the island through the mountains, through a town called Corte, which was reviewed to be a lively town thanks to the University and resulting energy of the student population.
What we hadn’t realised (basing our itinerary on blogs and reviews rather than a contoured map) is exactly how mountainous Corsica is. The majority of the island is one big mountain range, save for a relatively narrow strip around the coast.
Thus, our journey from Ajaccio to Bastia started almost immediately with a climb into the mountains and a corresponding change in scenery and in climate.
Soon back in the ‘head of broccoli‘ (as I had likened the terrain; florets of dense green forest), the roads were so windy it was as if their architect had dropped cooked spaghetti onto a map and then built the tarred road accordingly. Twists and turns as we climbed up one side of a mountain and then descended down the other, our little Fiat 500 feeling every inch in both directions.
The view was sublime. So picturesque. Very hard to describe in words how epic the vastness of the panoramas were. Climbing walls of mountains from where you could see an endless green blanket of forest and a hazy horizon, the blinking blue ocean.
We passed through a few small towns, with welling excitement as each approached; a collection of multi-storey stone symbols of civilisation, staked into the rocks and poking through the trees. Again, hard to describe adequately since ‘old buildings’ and ‘tightly packed enclaves’ hardly sound worthy of any emotional attachment. And yet the views weren’t getting tired and the little towns not getting stale, and we still had the compulsion to point out every single boulangerie we saw, as if gathering points on a treasure hunt.
Corte was immediately noticeably different from the other little towns. It was multiple times the size and as we entered the town there were sports fields and other telltale signs of the university campus. Driving through the Centre Ville, there were countless cafes and restaurants doing a roaring trade.
Being model citizen tourists, we ticked off the sites first – most notably the famous Citadel, built on the edge of a crag that as a literal cliffhanger allowed it to oversee its dominion in all directions – before rewarding ourselves with lunch.
Normally struggling with choosing a restaurant with so many options and usually only a single meal in each town, we were instantly drawn to a place called A Casa Di L’Orsu (House of the Bear, or similar) which had numerous wild boar meals on their menu display board outside. Being a speciality in Corsica and especially inland, we were sold!
With a bargain set menu (no doubt intended to appeal to a student clientele), we were able to sample a number of dishes including the peasant soup, a wild boar pasta dish, wild boar vol au vent (really just a fancy open pie; stole the show) and local cheeses and fig jam for which the inland is also famous.
Fed and happy, we finished off the journey, with Romesh for company until we were descending into Bastia and needed our GPS to guide us to our hotel.
We had booked 3 nights at Hotel Le Bastia so were very pleased when it exceeded our expectations. Besides having secure and spacious basement parking, our room had double French doors with wooden shutters to keep out the light and with a magnificent sea view when they were open! The hotel also had a fitness gym room and a large basement swimming pool that was heated and enclosed so it doubled as a sort of sauna vibe with loungers.
After our quick tour of the hotel, we hit the streets.
On arrival, while pleased for the view from our ridge, I’d been concerned that we may be a bit far from the action. N’est pas! We discovered that while it would be quite tiresome trekking up and down the zigzag roads to the promenade, there were stone step alleyways at regular intervals that allowed us to descend more directly, taking no more than a few minutes to get to the town square or the Old Port.
Bastia was preparing a Beer Fest in the town square which I am almost ashamed to say that we did not attend thanks to our lengthy no-sundowners the night before, the cross-country mountain-climbing traverse of the day and the knowledge that the next day was to be a long one.
We did toast our new homebase though, with a jug of sangria (the most fruit we’d had all holiday) and some croquettes, calamari and nachos tapas.
SUNDAY
Sunday was designated for our road trip around the Cap Corse, dubbed ‘an island with in an island’ because it is an index-finger peninsula poking out of the top of Corsican mainland fist.
We approached the road trip in an anticlockwise direction, as per most of the itineraries we had reviewed online. The rationale was to drive from east to west, following the Sun.
The first stop was a mere 11km from Bastia, a tiny town called Erbalunga, which was no more than a small ring of buildings hugging to a miniature marina on the sliver of flat(ish) land carved out of the mountains behind.
Within 20 minutes we’d covered the town end-to-end, enjoying the character of the narrow alleyways, steep stone staircase and random low archways that melded together the tatty-chic apartments in which people still went about their daily lives (as many generations had before them).
With a surprisingly lively town square with 7 or 8 restaurants, a handful of the essential shops on the high street and so close to Bastia (and its airport), Erbalunga would make an ideal Work From Anywhere town!
We got out for a quick trot around the next two or three towns and beaches, but it was quite windy so we didn’t stop for very long in any one place. Ironically when we stopped at the landmark Mattei Windmill it wasn’t moving, while we very nearly got blown off the koppie by a gale force gust of wind!
Any collection of words would not do justice to the spectacular panoramas – both inland and out to sea – to which we were treated as Chris zigged and zagged us along the coastal road.
Some parts were very steep and narrow with no barriers to the sheer drops beside us. Chris noted that if this trail was at home in South Africa there would be railings, warning signs, speed cameras and who knows what else, where in Corsica it was left to the driver to self-regulate in order to avoid tumbling off the cliff to a fiery death.
He negotiated the ups and downs valiantly as I click-click-clicked photos out of the passenger seat window, capturing at least some of the essence of the experience that I anticipated I would not be able to verbalise. View the Facebook album.
We had pencilled the idea of lunch on the road but not defined where we would like to stop. While we had looked at a few menu boards, nothing had grabbed us; too windy, too sunny, too busy, not busy enough. It had gotten to mid afternoon and we resigned ourselves that we’d missed the boat, everywhere would be on siesta and we’d have dinner on our returns to Bastia instead.
Then, best left in fate’s hands, we rounded a random bend between Centuri and Nonza and were faced with the perfect scene: a small wooden deck terrace with dainty wrought iron furniture, hanging so far off the steep hillside that it looked to be floating on the endless azure ocean on the skyline.
Chris parallel parked the car like a local, ie single smooth twist of the steering wheel to place our little Fiat 500 inches from the stone wall on the passenger side, and right in the middle of the cars in front and behind with no more than a half metre either side. THAT is how much motivation our little terrace provided!
The waitron at L’Auberge du Chat Qui Pêche (The Inn of the Chat who Fishes) welcomed us and ushered us to a table right at the edge of the terrace, from where we could see the terraced gardens (citrus and veg) below and of course the massive magnificent ocean that stretches as far as the eye could see in either direction.
Expecting to pay a premium (which is saying something considering the normal price of things), we were surprised when the daily menu board was presented to us and left on an easel for our inspection. Everything was easily €5 cheaper than in the cities, which is crazy since the view alone was worth multiple times that!
We shared a juicy 300g pork chop with sautéed potatoes complemented with fried calamari for a sort of surf n turf combo, washed down with a (small) beer to toast our good fortune that this slice of heaven had presented itself so clearly to us.
Wishing we could stay to enjoy the sunset, but knowing how treacherous the remainder of the drive would be in the dark, we called for our bill. Shock, horror, the restaurant didn’t accept credit card! Only cash and cheque. Cheque? In 2022?! Anyway…
With our broken French and the landlord’s broken English, we found a third option of mutual benefit. PayPal. Jumping onto their wifi I attempted to transfer the Euros from my PayPal account. The transaction required an OTP delivered by SMS, which was proving troublesome since we were in stone building in a thicket in the middle of nowhere.
The landlord didn’t even raise an eyebrow at my raindancing like a mad thing on the terrace, waving my phone at the sea trying to get the damn OTP. When it eventually came, he gave us a warm and friendly “Merci. Bon journée!” which is exactly what we’d had. A good day!
MONDAY
As the last day of our trip, we’d left the itinerary completely open so we could fill in the gaps for anything we’d not gotten to.
Since the sun was shining and the sky was as blue as the day is long, we decided to drive across to Saint Florent, a little coastal town at the westerly base of the Cap Corse route we’d driven the day before (but cut slightly short having spent extra time at our terrace restaurant).
Saint Florent as a seaside holiday resort town offered a stretch of beach, a marina with a broad selection of restaurants and, of course, a citadel. We figured we could easily entertain ourselves for a couple of hours with the combination of walking tour, sea-slothing and/or eating something delicious.
We easily managed all 3 in Saint Florent with a courtesy nod to culture by way of photos of the square, monument and citadel + delicious ice cream cones (from a store that had more than 50 flavours so it was very hard to choose) + a couple of hours of soaking up the soft Mediterranean sun and splashing around in the warm Mediterranean Sea.
We had seen some vineyards on the way in so fancied our chances of a wine tasting and light late lunch / charcuterie board on the way home.
Finding the wineries was very easy; they were lined up along the road through Patrimonio. Choosing was a bit of a crap-shoot since we hadn’t heard of any of them. We stopped in at a few, muddled through the obligatories with the hosts (none of whom spoke English; clearly this is not a big tourist activity) and didn’t find anything that tickled us (especially not the sweet muscat wine!) nor any with a kitchen or snacks of any sort.
By the time we got back to Bastia we were ravenous… but still had an hour to wait until any dinner restaurants opened at 18h30. We passed some time having a glass of wine on the town square before going for dinner at a grill house famed equally for their magnificent rotisserie chicken and their large portions. Parfait!
At least doing everything on foot means that each activity is equally about the journey and the destination and we soaked up our last sunset as we walked hand-in-hand along the promenade past the Old Port and the citadel for the last time.