Restaurants boasting sea views are hardly at a premium on a Mediterranean
island. There are, indeed, some places in which it seems to be an unwritten
rule that every 100 yards of sand has to support at least three bustling
little seafood establishments. However, the sea-view from the Auberge A
Magina, on the island of Corsica, is something special.
“Special” because the restaurant is about 10 miles inland, perched on a high
slope in the village of Oletta, offering a magnificent vista over craggy
terraces, vineyards and meadows all the way back to the perfect cliffs and
beaches west of St Florent. It’s a view that seems to take in three or four
different nations and geographies in one rich swoop of the eye.
Nationalities are a complex issue on this contentious little island. Unless
you are particularly well-grounded in European nationalist politics and
history, famous Corsicans usually boil down to a shortlist of one. He being
that Ajaccio boy and ambitious megalomaniac, Napoleon, fondly remembered by
the French despite the millions he left dead on European battlefields from
Lisbon to Lvov.
It’s more than a little strange that a Corsican should have become history’s
most famous/notorious Frenchman. Spend more than five minutes on Corsica and
it becomes apparent that the island is very far from being a little floating
annexe of la belle France. This is an island with a fierce sense of its own
identity, one that goes beyond the surface of nationalist graffiti, one that
colours an entire way of life.
Not an inconsiderable part of it is the topography, that spine of crags and
daunting mountain ridges dressed in the maquis scrub, which started off as
cover for local guerrillas fighting Italian occupiers in the second world
war and ended up as a catch-all term for the French Resistance.
Corsica’s daunting GR20 long-distance hiking trail attracts a surprising
number of takers every year, not a few of them Scots, finding ready
opportunities to indulge that covert national masochistic streak. There’s a
certain madness involved in tackling such a harsh itinerary when the island
offers so much natural beauty better observed at a more relaxed pace.
St Florent, in the north of the island, provides a gentle introduction to some
of the island’s most alluring beaches. The Popeye company boats sail
regularly from the quayside, a few miles along the shore from the fine
silvery sands of Lodo beach.
Disembarking on a beautiful, deserted beach front, the newcomer might wonder
why everybody is scuttling off and heading up a cliff path. Follow them,
though, and you’ll discover, after an hour or so of leisurely crag-hopping,
that the path leads to an even more sublime beach — Saleccia, which boasts
finer, more lustrous sand, even more space, and dunes backing the strand.
Back in St Florent, you’ll discover an unassuming town behind the countless
yachts and speedboats tied up in the marina. A short walk up to the Genoese
citadel allows you to get a perspective on St Florent’s perfect location,
with coastal views on both sides.
The town offers little in the way of obvious tourist sites, so visitors tend
to concentrate on exploring the various seafood restaurants clustered along
the harbour front. A little to the east, however, stands the cathedral,
which is worth a visit if you can manage to tie in your schedule with the
times when the tourist office condescends to open it. Built on the site of
the original Roman settlement, Santa Maria Assunta is Pisan Romanesque in
style, but has a pleasing rustic feel, decorated as it is with unusual
carved wild beasts and snakes.
Ghoulish aficionados of Catholic relics won’t want to miss the mummified
remains of St Flor, a Roman soldier apparently martyred for his Christian
leanings.
Walk out east from St Florent beyond the cathedral and you pass through
arbours and orchards into vineyard country (the land stretching south of the
hilltop village of Patrimonio has its own denomination). The empty road
climbs steadily, but the sea views provide some reward for your exertions.
Along the way you pass a ruined medieval chapel, still the repository for
votive offerings, prayers and rustic twig crucifixes. Eventually you’ll
reach Oletta, whose charms include its artisans’ workshops, its murky back
streets zig-zagging around the slopes, and of course the fabulous Auberge.
You’ll find French bargain-hunters thronging here in summer. Corsica’s
relationship with France may be substantially more troubled than Scotland’s
with England, but there are plenty of parallels, not least in that Corsica’s
economy is substantially reliant on the annual influx of tourists from the
mainland.
The rather upscale nature of French tourism has pushed prices for some
services, notably taxis, way higher than anything you’d expect south of
Scandinavia. As Corsican tourism becomes gradually more democratic, this
should change. For the time being, though, the budget-conscious may have to
maintain a certain degree of alertness. Hire cars, the cost included with
most packages, are an asset on an island with a rather sketchy public
transport network.
That said, the bus ride over the mountain passes from St Florent to Bastia is
fabulously scenic, with glories that might elude the car driver distracted
by the task of changing down for the next tricky bend. At first you’ll
grumble about the limited timetable, with buses departing St Florent first
thing in the morning and returning early-evening; but if you make the
journey in late summer, the trips coincide with the first flush of sun
coming up over Italy, and the gradual evening decline towards the Balearics,
both events characterised by sublime colours lighting up the ridges and
peaks.
From Bastia, Corsica’s celebrated Micheline train pursues a rickety and
relentlessly scenic route across the central ranges to Ajaccio in the south.
The train’s upward progress seems to take you out of French Corsica into the
heartland of the island. You’ll be tempted to hop off at any number of
mountain halts, but persevere to Corte, the austere unofficial capital of
the Corsican nation, fringed by granite peaks, with a cool alpine air in
contrast to the heat of the coast.
Make the 15-minute uphill slog from the station to the upper town, clustering
around the portentous citadel, where all the action in terms of restaurants
and bars seems to centre on the Cours Paoli. The Museu di a Corsica tends
towards that worthy celebration of ancient peasant virtues common in
institutions with a nationalist or ethnographic focus. All but the most
reverent lover of farm implements is likely to find the grand modern
building substantially more appealing than the exhibits.
Back at the coast, the Cap Corse, the strip of land that looks to be raising a
defiant digit towards Italy, offers something of a contrast to the austerity
of Corte. Campsites and small villages here are the playground of the
seriously wealthy French, and are correspondingly chic.
Cavalier bus drivers whizz insouciantly up the hairpin curves of the
exhilarating coast road that runs up the east side from Bastia towards the
tip of the cape. The first main stop is Erbalunga, which, though prettifying
by the day, still retains attractive aspects of simpler origins. Some
Parisian bohemians tried to start an artists’ colony there back in the
1920s, and if local resistance proved a little too resolute at that time,
French aesthetes continue to be attracted by the light, the vistas and the
atmosphere. Erbalunga’s most prestigious restaurant has long been Le Pirate,
which overlooks the fishing harbour. It’s worth a visit, even if a constant
stream of chic Parisian gourmet tourists have blown Le Pirate off course
into the rough channels of pretension — you’ll pay more than a few pieces of
silver for dinner. Less adventurous lunchers could do worse than grab a
harbourside table at a cheaper establishment like L’Esquinade, offering
fresh grilled fish according to the day’s catch.
Even here, old Corsica isn’t too far away, just an hour’s stroll up the road
to the ruined battlements of Castello, with an attendant tale of medieval
adultery, family vendettas, reprisal killings and treachery. Even half a
millennium after the French demolished the castle, it’s apparent that
Corsica won’t be tamed any time soon.
Details: the Corsica specialist Corsican Places offers seven
nights at Maison de la Paroisse in St Florent from £513 per person (valid
for travel May 6-20 2007). This price is based on four sharing and includes
direct return flights from Edinburgh to Bastia, car hire and a welcome
hamper.
For more information, call Reservations on 0845 330 2113 or visit
www.corsica.co.uk/travel.
