Corsica: The Ugly
Friends warned me about Corsica before I left home, from: “They’ll ignore you in shops if you’re not Corsican,” to the rather extreme: “The locals slash tyres of tourist cars: buy a Corsica sticker and put it near your number plate.” Worse still, when I asked my Corsican friends on arrival if I should indeed buy a sticker because I had heard…”Oh yeah,” one friend said, “about the car burnings of cars that aren’t from here. You passed one on the way.” Indeed, we had passed a burnt-out car on a construction site. “So it’s true?” I asked. “No,” the other friend said, “we’re just joking: it’s not true and it doesn’t happen.” They giggled and pushed more local products to sample in my direction. My car remained intact and I found the locals very friendly.
The car-wrecking aspect of Corsican vandalism may be an urban myth, but Corsica does have an ugly side. Pictured is one of many road signs on the island that have had the French spelling vandalised leaving only the Corsican spelling visible. This one seems to have been hit with an air gun as well. The Corsicans are proud of their heritage and perhaps still a little(?) annoyed that, despite becoming a republic in 1755 after a long struggle for independence, the island was sold by the Genoese to France in 1764. A further six years of battle went on before Corsica was finally incorporated as part of France. Apparently, some of the locals are still upset about this, so the signs get the Corsican treatment I’d heard so much about. My joking friends then got serious and told me about the arson attacks on illegally-built houses and businesses close to beach fronts, which they justified using Corsican logic (vendettas). The Good of Corsica definitely outweighs The Bad and The Ugly, but keep a fire extinguisher handy just in case.
Before I visited Corsica, I imagined hot, sunny beaches and perfect snorkelling lagoons with the lush backdrop of mountains. I think it does have all those things, but summer was on its way out by the time I arrived. It rained almost daily. Therefore, I’m classifying the weather as The Bad of Corsica. Corsica often is that sunny destination, but for four days, the clouds covered the distant mountains and warmish beaches were far too turbulent for any visibility to bother getting the snorkel out. The bad weather did, however, lead to good. This tree is the largest chestnut tree in Europe, and well worth a visit at this time a year for the abundance of chestnuts raining from the tree, as well as simply to witness its enormous girth. The walk through the forest was well covered from rain, making the weather less of a problem. I was there with three friends and we were unable to link arms around the tree. It has ferns and moss growing on its trunk, and the camera couldn’t catch its height without a wide-angle lens. It’s massive! Had it not been for the bad weather, I wouldn’t have a big bag full of chestnuts to roast for the first time in my life. Apart from the weather, there’s only one other Bad I can think of… (scroll down)
I’m really scraping the barrel for The Bad here, but it will certainly be a bad day for some when the village pictured on this protruding cliff loses some of its buildings to the sea. Those rocks in the sea below are bits of broken cliff, and I don’t see any reason why the cliff won’t continue to break off a little at a time. The only problem is that the village on top is perched on a cliff that looks less than secure. I’m sure it’s been like this for hundreds of years, and perhaps it will be for hundreds more, but walking through some villages where the buildings overhang the cliffs (including the café we stopped for a drink , where the room was built out so that we were able to look back at the cliff face next to the café) made me wonder how so many people can live in these houses without panicking. I struggled to stay in the café for half an hour knowing the building was teetering so much! Apart from this disaster waiting to happen (and Corsican sausages), Corsica isn’t at all bad.
If you look closely, you can see buildings perched on the side of the cliff face in the distance. These are likely to fall into the sea one day when the cliff breaks off, joining the other broken bits of cliff pictured in the water. Corsica has a bit of everything: beaches, pretty walks, old bunkers, mountains, ski resorts, and Europe’s largest chestnut tree, which was kind of handy since a few days of rain meant fewer beach-side jaunts and more free time for other activities. In many places, the cows roam free on the roads, and although this could end in tears on dark and stormy nights, it was a pleasure to slow down to get around the slow-moving mooers, like the one pictured, on the mountainous roads. We had just passed this cow’s mum a few metres earlier and there was much mooing going on between the two of them.
So what’s this all about? Hidden behind the tennis course is the Bun-J (“j” and “g” pronunciation are reversed in French) Ride ramp, where you can fling yourself off a ramp using a variety of tools, such as this bike, pictured, which has no brakes so you’ve got no chance to change your mind once you’ve left the top of the ramp. Alternatively, you can slide off the ramp with a mountain board in summer or a snowboard or skis in winter. You can jump off the edge if that’s what floats your boat. St Jean de Sixt just got exciting! Way, way below the ramp is a ravine which produces a lovely spooky echo of flowing water as you bounce down towards it before being pulled with ropes to the other side. Back flips are applauded and last-minute swearing prompts evil laughter from onlookers.
In this zoomed-out image, you can see that the detail extends right to the end of the property, with well-maintained flowers and bushes in colours that compliment each other nicely. Something less man-made is the sky: it’s that postcard blue colour that I always presumed was captured with a filter or Photoshop, but here it is in one of my standard, dodgy photos taken without a tripod. Since moving to the Alps, I’ve noticed that the sky is often that fake colour that I’d seen in postcards. Who ever thought it was real? I’m pleased to have captured it in a photo as evidence of its existence!
We also visited the vineyards where Philippe explained that horses are now replacing tractors, with wine-makers reverting to more traditional methods at every stage of the grape-growing and collecting process. We watched some horses being used to walk down each row of grapes, where boxes were placed on sleighs behind the horses — somewhere a tractor could never enter. 
