From The Sunday Times Travel Magazine

Oh, he was good, Jean-Luc. Looking back, he very nearly had me fooled.

When I told him I was thinking of a trip to Corsica, he winced and shook his head like a plumber assessing an expensive radiator repair.

‘I don’t think you’ll like it so much. Many mountains; very hard driving.’

The Sunday Times Travel Magazine - December

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BACKGROUND

• Walking coast to coast across Corsica

• A smooth family holiday in Corsica

• No riffraff please, this is Corsica

• From grape to glass in Corsica

• How do we get to Corsica without flying?

Related Internet Links

• Holidays in Corsica

Related Links

• Walking coast to coast across Corsica

‘But you go there every year!’

‘Er… yes… yes,’ he stumbled for words, ‘but it’s not for everybody. You know the national dish is rotten cheese? They serve it with maggots in the bottom.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Yes, and they all drink myrte, a digestif made from twigs.’

I wrinkled my nose.

My distaste encouraged him to go a step too far: ‘The Corsicans are very rough people. They don’t like visitors. They throw rocks at Parisian cars!’

That’s when I realised my French hairdresser was trying to put me off – so that he could have Corsica all to himself. I booked my tickets the next day.

As it happens, everything Jean-Luc had said was true – except that the Corsicans don’t throw rocks at Parisian cars, they throw plastic explosives (don’t worry, it was a one-off apparently).

The locals, it seems, know they live in one of the world’s most beautiful spots and they’re not interested in bumping up the population.

Indeed, Corsica is no ordinary flat-and-sandy Med island. It is the thinking man’s holiday retreat, with craggy mountains as heart-stopping as northern China’s; beaches that could be Seychellois; and gorgeous salmon-coloured towns from a Tuscan watercolour.

It’s 10 holidays in one – perfect for people who want trekking one day, wallowing the next, and a meal every night that leaves them sated, happy and tipsy.

The ‘secrecy’ thing is working, too – and Brits are scarce. While eating a brie baguette by the port, I heard only French chatterings. In the supermarkets – which I’d expected to find packed with British villa tenants stocking up on teabags and loo roll – there was not a Home Counties lilt to be heard. And on Palombaggia beach, I was the only sunburnt English holidaymaker, having fallen asleep in the sun.

I stayed in Porto Vecchio, a port town in the southeast (Corsica looks vaguely lemon-shaped and has four airports dotted evenly around its rim). It was the obvious choice: I was after some late-summer sun, and this corner of Corsica serves tourists well into October (the other three hubs – Bastia, Calvi and Ajaccio – shut up shop in September). This meant flying in to Figari, where wild cows roamed the airport car park, and the air smelt of an English garden in summer.

The best beaches, too, are on this side. One in particular had caught my attention, the guidebook painting it like a far-flung honeymoon resort – the sort of place that is usually reached after 32 hours on five different aircraft, each one smaller than the last.

But Palombaggia was a 12-minute drive from my villa, at the end of a track where rented Renaults were parked in the shade of pine trees – at most I saw 12 cars, on one day just three.

What first hit me was the colour of the sea – I had only seen water like it in the Indian Ocean. But lagoons there are not sheltered by giant russet boulders that tumble into the ocean like ill-fated Jenga blocks; nor do they have cafes serving moules frites and Corsican rosé when you emerge from the waves.

The sand underfoot was like Johnson’s Baby Powder. I stayed until it grew late. If only my villa hadn’t been so near, I would have stayed the night – overlooking the whole thing from the super chic Les Bergeries de Palombaggia hotel (another well-kept French secret).

The next morning, my quest for after-sun lotion took me to Bonifacio, Corsica’s most photogenic town. First, I climbed the Montée Rastello – a never-ending ascent of ancient stone steps – to the Eglise St-Roch, a natural catch-your-breath stop with views across to Sardinia.

Then the Montée St-Roch took me all the way into the walled citadel, where Napoleon once lived. I skirted his old home where French school-children monopolised the doorway, making rubbings of the commemorative plaque.

Even though I was at cloud level, the cobblestoned alleys still rose, one to a seafood restaurant built into the cliff-face, so precarious that vertigo sufferers must leave nail marks in the tablecloths. Bonifacio is a textbook French town where I could easily fritter away a week eating crêpes Suzette and buying useful things like linen tablemats, vintage shop signs and jam.

But halfway through my stay, I realised my Corsican experience had yet to veer from the beaches and the cafes. I had been studiously ignoring the mountains that loomed westwards from the corner of my vision, with their dark clouds and jagged escarpments.

But Marie, the villa’s stern-looking Corsican housekeeper, told me if I hadn’t seen the mountains, I hadn’t seen Corsica. She was an avid hiker and I dreaded seeing her again without having tackled at least one walk.

I took the D268 inland from the coast and soon saw the sign I’d been looking for: ‘piscines naturelles’ (rock pools). These ice-cold swimming spots are just off the road as it starts to rise sharply, all the way to the highest town on the island, Zonza. This area is known as the Col de Bavella, and stone formations have created deep pools, surrounded by boulders that make natural diving boards.

With Marie in mind, I leapt in from up high. It was freezing – and it was sensational. I almost couldn’t catch my breath with the cold. But half an hour later, heading on up through the mountains with the car heating blasting at full pelt, I knew she would be impressed.

Around 1,000m up, a herd of goats forced me to pull over. Here, as so many times on this trip, I recognised scenes from countless other latitudes: the forests of New England in Fall; the bare cork trees of Australia’s Outback; the misty peaks of Mongolia; and the rocky streams of Canada’s grizzly territory.

This tiny speck of an island held enough potential for me to return every summer for a century and never experience the same thing twice. I knew why Jean-Luc and his fellow Frenchmen want to keep the island to themselves (despite the rocks and plastic explosives). Though I recognised a hundred different countries in Corsica, there was also nowhere like it on Earth.

TRAVEL BRIEF

GO INDEPENDENT

Thomsonfly (www.thomsonfly.com) flies to Figari from Gatwick, and Ajaccio from Manchester and Gatwick. Or try Monarch (www.flymonarch.com), XL Airways (www.xl.com) or Easyjet (www.easyjet.com). See http://english.visit-corsica.com for the island’s hotels and campsites. Hotel Roy d’Aragon (00 33 4 8961 9002) is a classic seaside hotel in Bonifacio with doubles from £43, room only.

GO PACKAGED

Coastline (0844 557 1020, www.coastline.co.uk) is a villa tour operator with rental homes across southern Corsica. I Vaddi (sleeps eight) is an old stone farmhouse just 10 minutes from the southwestern beaches; a week starts from £629pp, including Gatwick flights and car hire.

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