The Wild West

Leaving Calvi at dawn

Girolata

With a lull in the prevailing south west winds we continued on our way south and along the dramatic and rugged west coast. Our destination was the wonderful Golfo de Girolata, a part of the Scandola Nature Reserve and a Unesco World Heritage site. It is an area of natural beauty and is noted for its spectacular sheer red granite cliffs rising over 400 mts high. Picturesque Girolata with its Genoese fort is inaccessible by road and is now full of tightly packed mooring buoys and tripper boats so we decided to drop the anchor in a bay round the corner. The snorkelling was just as impressive as our surroundings. The following morning we sailed on past Les Calanques, the geological highlight of the coast, with its jagged crimson cliffs rising up out of the crystal clear water. We sailed on between the nasty Iles des Sanguines rocks and finally dropped anchor in Ajaccio at the head of the bay.

Golfo de Girolata anchorage

Sailing past Les Calanques at dawn

At anchor in Ajaccio

We had a mooch around Corsica's capital city and birth place of Napoleon. We decided to give the Napoleonic tourist trail a miss having had our fill on Elba. Instead we went on the hunt for a ships chandler and some anitifouling paint for our haul out due next spring. We also checked out the train times as we planned to take a ride up into the mountains on the narrow gauge single track railway. With a settled forecast we left the boat and set off for Ajaccio train station and enjoyed the ride up into the mountains alighting at the quaint station in the hamlet of Vizzavona. We were now at

Arriving at Vizzavona

an altitude of over 900 mts and the air was considerably cooler. Vizzavona is a popular starting and finishing place for the GR 20 sixteen day hiking trail from north to south Corsica. It is considered to be the most difficult of all the GR (grande randonnee) routes and one of the most beautiful mountain trails in Europe. It is not for the inexperienced as a lot of the trail is over 2000 mts and you need specialist equipment. We sat and had a coffee in the bar next to the station and watched the hikers congregate prior to setting off on their own personal challenge and us on a comparatively minor stroll! We joined the trail for an hour long walk through a forest of pine and beech to the Cascade des Anglais, a series of waterfalls made popular by the

The ruined Grand Hotel

wealthy British visitors in the early twentieth century on their European grand tour. The Grand Hotel dating from this Belle Epoque was still standing but looking forlorn and derelict. Despite lacking the stout walking boots and hiking sticks that most of our fellow walkers had we made it comfortably and settled down next to one of the many rockpools for our picnic lunch. We had planned on a swim but the sun was hiding behind the mountain tops and the cool air put us off. Leaving the fragrant smell of pine behind us we retraced our route and caught the last train back to Ajaccio.

Vizzavona train station

River running through the forest of pine and beech

Cascades des Anglais

Cascades des Anglais