The trip started with a comedy foul up. We had to change planes (and indeed airports) in Paris and our rucksacks didn't make it onto the second plane. The only items of our luggage that arrived in Ajaccio were the ice axes, which had travelled with the pilots as "dangerous weapons". We had to wait for 5 hours until the next plane, getting some odd looks sitting on the beach with the axes and not a snowy mountain in sight. By the time we had collected the sacks it was too late to get further than Ajaccio that evening. Being the Mediterranean the tidal range is minimal so we slept on the beach under the town walls, suitably fuelled, of course 😁.
The little toy train that cuts across the spine of Corsica is a lovely way to get into the mountains. The ground is so steep that in one place it goes round in a complete circle, and there's a great story that one time both driver and guard got off, the train ran away and they had to chase it in a taxi, catching it up at the next uphill. The train took us to Corte, the old capital of the country, then we got a taxi up to Calacuccia, the island's highest village. The taxi driver claimed that on his one visit to Scotland he had won the European Crown Green Bowling Championship, but if so his achievement doesn't seem to have made it to the age of the internet.
Viro valley and Punta Minuta
The weather then clagged in for three days, with soggy snow to low down, turning to rain on and off. Paddy ran round the lake a couple of times but otherwise we spent most of the time reading and blethering in the local bar. Finally we had a half decent day and trekked up through the snowy pine forests of the Viro valley to the Tighietta Hut below Monte Cinto, Corsica's highest peak. The palatial hut had solar powered lighting and heating, a novelty back in 1992, and unsurprisngly we had it to ourselves.
Paddy below Punta Crucetta
Monte Cinto the next day was hard work in soft snow, thigh deep in places. The 700m to the col below the minor summit of Capu Falo took nearly 3 hours. Once on the col it was a different matter though, as the new snow had been blown off leaving old wind-scoured nêvé that was a joy to walk on. The ridge over Punta Crucetta was a fun mix of crisp walking and easy scrambling, with superb views of the pinnacled north ridge of Punta Minuta (header pic) and the blunt tower of Paglia Orba.
Paddy on ridge below Monte Cinto, Paglia Orba behind
Monte Cinto ahead was looking increasingly impressive. The pictures I had seen of it were of a long skyline ridge so the steepness of the face was a surprise. It had excellent snow though, with a finish on snowed up rock, maybe Scottish Grade II. The wind had increased and it was bitterly cold so we didn't hang around on the summit, didn't even take a summit photo! The good snow made descent easy as far as the Capu Falo col, dodging the scrambly sections, but the last part was exhausting, even going downhill with our tracks to follow.
Monte Cinto
The next two days were soggy again, with snow melting all around us, and after a tentative look at the Paglia Orba (obviously not feasible in the conditions) we headed out to lower ground at Corte. It turned out that our Cinto day was the only day of good weather that the mountains had in our entire ten days, so maybe late March isn't the best time to visit Corsica! Corte itself was a brilliant place, the old town wound steeply around a rock spike with a castle on the top. We spent an entertaining evening sipping wine in the sunset watching the local lads ride up and down on their Vespas (Corsica is Italian really 😁), posing furiously for their female equivalents sat at the tables outside the bars.
Corte
Corte is sited where a pair of gorges debouch from the mountains and as the mountain weather was still bad I went for a long day up one and down the other. The Tavignano Gorge was the more dramatic of the two, deeply cut, with a path and some optional scrambly sections. From its far end a steep path leads over to the Restonica Gorge, but the plateau between them was in deep snow so made for more tough going. Surprisingly that was the only place on the hill I met other people, a German couple, doing the same loop the other way round. We were grateful for each other''s tracks! The Restonica has a road up it but there is a much more scenic path on the other side, close to the river with lots of pools and rapids. It's more open than the Tavignano but another beautiful place.
Gorges de Tavignano
We next had a rather half-hearted look at Monte d'Oro, using the train to get a head start. Deep soggy snow and more rubbish weather led to us abandoning this fairly early on and heading down to the coast at Porto. Here we finally had some sunshine, although it was still pretty foul back in the mountains. We camped on the steepest proper campsite I've ever stayed in, a set of perched ledges below the impressive triple prong of the Tre Signore.
Tre Signore, Porto
Just down the valley the granite of the coast is fretted into weird and wonderful shapes; boulders chemically hollowed out into skulls, curvy spirals of rock teetering on the edge of big drops to the sea, knife edged aretes ending in nothing. We went to the 16th Century tower near them for the sunset and I was so taken with the place that I went back the next day while Paddy went for a run up the Spelunca Gorge. I spent the day bouldering around on amazing contorted granite and scrambling up a minor peak.
Golfe de Porto and Monte Senino
Time was up and as our flight out was early in the morning we decided to have a few beers in the bar at the airport then doss on the beach outside. As it happened there was a British walking group going out on an evening flight and by an odd coincidence the guide had been one of my tutors at Aston, having abandoned academia for an outdoor life only a couple of years after I did. A good evening was had by all (I think 😁). The flight back turned out to be a mirror image of the flight out. Our rucksacks again failed to make it across Paris in time for the second flight, but this time it was to our advantage as the airline shipped them home for us, saving us the effort of carting them across London! Although the trip wasn't that successful in terms of achievement much of it was excellent fun, it definitely had character and Corsica is a terrific place.
Capu Falo from Tighietta Hut. We slogged up to the col left of it.
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