Corsica

For a long time I’ve been interested to go to Corsica, we even considered going for our honeymoon. It’s a beautiful island of beaches and mountains owned by France or part of France or something like that, they speak French but apparently they don’t like to be called French, like the welsh. They hate it when you call them french. 

Anyway for our honeymoon we ended up just seeing what flights go from Manchester on the afternoon after our wedding and we ended up going to Crete. It was the only time we ever did a normal hotel with a pool kind of holiday. But a few months ago when it seemed like we were going to be moving back to England we decided we should take our chance to go to Corsica. It’s pretty annoying to get to from the north of the UK. Flights are only from the south and only on a Sunday last time I researched, but going from where we live in France we could just drive 3 hours 30 and drive onto a ferry.

I’m a big convert to ferrys. They are magical. They literally ferry you about to the place you want to go, while you sleep! It’s so relaxing compared to flying (especially when someone else is driving.) You can pack whatever you like as long as it fits in your car. We even saw someone bring a dining table on top of their car! You don’t have to worry about liquids, and if you want to bring a razor on board to shave your legs you can. Has there ever been a ferry based hijacking? Let me just google… Oh yes once. 1974 in Singapore, 5 hostages, no one died. We’re well overdue another one in my opinion. 

Security was lax, on the way they asked if we had any paint, we said no, but I did actually have some posca paint pens, they should be more specific because I bet you can take watercolour paint. On the way back they did look in the car boot but they didn’t open any bags. I feel like when I fly now it’s just the boring thing you have to do in order to get to your destination, whereas the ferry did feel like part of the holiday. We did have a cabin though, maybe if you were sleeping on the floor it wouldn’t feel so holiday like. People brought sleeping bags and slept together in little friendship groups and it looked pretty fun, I would like to see if you could get away with bringing a tent. And a camping stove to use on deck, that would be so cool.

The holiday would have been perfect if it wasn’t for Eric’s stitches which he couldn’t get wet. Any other time it would be no problem to not swim for 10 days, but this was such a water based holiday. We stayed in an Airbnb that had a pool and was a 5 minute walk from the beach. 

The first morning we got in at 8am in Propriano in the south west and drove down the most southern point Bonifacio. It was a beautiful city with a load of millionaire super yachts to look at. My Dad spent his 21st birthday there helping his millionaire uncle to sail his boat there, and for his birthday he bought my Dad a bowl of 21 scoops of ice cream.

My Dad on his trip round the med in 1978

From there we went to the most beautiful beach, the water was that perfect turquoise that I associate with the Carribbean. Me and Percy got straight in. The doctor who stitched up Eric’s knee said he can’t go in the pool because of the risk of the wound getting infected but that the sea was even worse. I put this special splash proof plaster on Eric’s knee, it was basically sticky back plastic. But because it was his knee not a flat bit of him it did’t stick well. I said he could stand in the sea and play ball, it was really hot so he wanted to cool down. I forget 8 year olds aren’t like adults though, once you say he can play he gave very little thought to his leg and it was stressful to watch. Then he fell over in the sea and while the splash protector did help it didn’t completely protect him. He said, “don’t worry I feel fine.” He didn’t understand that there are no immediate consequences to the leg getting wet, but days down the line there could be. 

We had planed to go canyoning, which looked so fun, but obviously not something Eric could do. I had this book called Wild Swimming France and the absolute best looking places in the book were in Corsica, so on the second day we headed out in search of them. We had bought Eric a gift of a “Perplexus” (a big complex maze ball) so that he had something fun to do while we were playing in the water. He was very excited for this. We drove inland from where we were staying into the mountains and it was so beautiful but in a different way to the mountains where we live, the rocks were red and the trees were all pine trees. We came across a beautiful bit of river and we should have just stopped there and swam and had our picnic but we didn’t because I wanted to find this specific place from the wild swimming book. 

We eventually found this bridge, packed up and continued our journey on foot up the riverbed like the book was suggesting. The book said this was a 20 minute easy walk. They didn’t have instructions for how long it would take with a kid who A) can’t get their knee wet and B) refuses to bend their knee. Percy happily scrambled off ahead hopping from rock to rock but it was slow for Eric. We had to be next to him to make sure he didn’t trip and when it got to a bit where you needed to step a bit in the water we gave him a piggy back. He was trying hard and I know it would have been annoying for him, he would have loved to run off like a free mountain goat but that’s how he got this injury in the first place.

After over an hour we needed a break and we all sat on a big flat rock to eat our picnic. I ventured a bit further and found it opened out to a beautiful bit that you could actually swim in that was pretty deep. It wasn’t the place photographed in the book. I’ve no idea where that was meant to be, but this was a lovely bit of river that we could have completely to ourselves, so why not go a bit further. We found Eric a spot he could sit and dip his feet in and then we all swam.

 I enjoyed it a lot, apart from when I heard the sound of a wild animal, something cat like, but not just a cat. It was pretty creepy sound but we never saw anything. They do have wild bob cats in Corsica so maybe it was that. There was a cool deep bit that I could jump into and I took some photos on this disposable underwater camera I have. We didn’t stay too long because Eric got bored and it was a long trek back.

After beginning to wade back through the river with Percy while Dan was carrying Eric, Dan spotted a path! The journey that had taken over an hour of scrambling, carry Eric and being really careful not to let Eric’s leg get wet was just a 5 minute walk on this path! We couldn’t believe it! The next morning we went to our local beach, our Airbnb host had apologised to us that this beach was not as beautiful as Saint Guilia the very turquoise one. Just look at this hideous beach we had to endure. 

We had it pretty much all to ourselves because no one else would want to come to such a disgusting beach.  We also went for a lovely little walk round a peninsula and played some crazy golf. I was very bad at it.On the last day we went back to the beautiful beach and hired a pedalo with a slide, unfortunately Eric still couldn’t go in the sea but he had fun on the boat. 

And then we went to get the ferry back. The crossing on the way back was longer because we left from the east coast, we also had no idea it would be stopping at Sardinia. It was about 9pm and we were just getting ourselves to bed, because when we share a room we just all go to bed at an average of our bedtimes. But then I got to go out and have a little glimpse of Italy at sunset which was a bonus. 

In the morning we arrived at Toulon around 9:30am but before that we saw a dog having a wee on the carpet outside of the lift and then a woman stepped in it, and a big crowd were watching and the dog just kept on weeing everywhere. We also saw a woman wandering around with a cat in a special cat backpack. You just don’t get this kind of fun on Ryanair. I wonder if you are allowed to take any pet on a ferry? Can you take a snake? Can you take a horse? Could you take a hamster?  

We had so much to do when we arrived back. Eric had his doctors appointment to take the stitches out, I had to do a food shop and then do my lesson planning and last minute preparations for my exhibition that I was putting up the next day. Plus the normal unpacking and washing stuff, so not a relaxed end, but I’m very grateful we got to see such a beautiful place.

Next time I’ll write about my exhibition and going to the water park. A bientôt.