Corse, France
09/07/2023
The next morning, I woke up to the first rays of sunlight rising over the nearby mountain peak, of which I promptly took a picture from inside the roof tent. It was still early and I wanted to get some more rest, but man did this get me excited for the day ahead.
A little later we had breakfast and packed everything up to be on our way, but not before photographing the early morning sun and view from the air.
To give some background on journey planning when offroading: throughout the entire trip, we did not have a fixed itinerary but instead always roamed the island with an open eye for places to explore and paths to follow. We also use satellite imagery for points of interests and potential campsites as wells as databases with offroad tracks of other explores, such as wikiloc and those in our Garmin Offroad GPS. And not to forget my trusted droni, which I love to send up to get a birds-eye view.
That day, our first goal was to get closer to the windmills we had spotted the evening before. We descended the overgrown gravel path until we reached a proper road, which we followed northbound towards the north-most point of Corse.
The huge rotors turning were impressive to see up close, but we soon set our sights on a new destination: a beautiful beach downhill ahead of us. It was quite the challenge getting there by car, but we ended up right next to the ocean, in which we promptly went for a swim.
Admittedly, it was not a remote beach per se, only remote for other people’s vehicles constrained to tarmac. We on the other hand managed to use service roads to find a perfect parking spot on a huge concrete pad right next to the waterfront.
The excitement was not shared by everyone. Yet another small Corsican man, probably sad about having had to walk the distance, started shouting and wildly gesticulating for no reason, as if the car parked on a massive man-made concrete slab was hurting the animals and his feelings alike. If you ask me (and take a look at the picture above), the car only enriched the scenery, but to make sure he did not do anything stupid in a country where he had the home advantage, we decided to continue our tour. So off we went, back westwards into the mountains.
For reference, I have attached a screenshot of our route. You can see the start at Bastia the day before on the bottom right, up all the way north with some detours and then back down until we crossed the peninsula to the west. This is the blue line leading West at the heart of the below map. It also has a little detour in the middle, which was the remote valley we slept in before fully crossing, which I will get to later.
While the road looks like a pretty straight crossing between the two sides of Corse, it involved managing quite a lot of tricky offroad paths with steep gradients and many obstacles along the way. These were quite challenging, though the pictures can hardly convey the complexity.
Needless to say that while exhausting, exploring nature like this offers unique perspective to think and sense of solitude in an otherwise action-and-people-packed world.
The tracks took us further inland, all the way to the spot where we would later decide to make camp.
After a long while of following remote gravel roads, we decided on a spot for the night. I was smart enough to forget taking a picture there, but like in the picture below, it was in one of the outlets of the track.
While the bush protected us from the wind and preying eyes, the distance to the ocean and lack of wind meant temperatures were at a record-high, reaching 4o° C. To make matters worse, our fridge had broken down and thus our beer was warm.
Moreover, an enormous army of flies and mosquitos were after us. This is not to complain, as we still had a wonderful experience there, but to give context to the wonderful views and sceneries that pictures enable us to take in from the comfort of our homes.
De bons moments !