To Corte

After breakfast, we all boarded the van and drove to Corte. This town is in the interior of Corsica and at an altitude of 500 meters. We only had an hour to look around a bit. The centre square has a statue of Pascal Paoli, the Father of Corsican nationalism. We packed up our stuff and headed out on the trail up the Tavignano River. It turns into a steep sided "gorge" higher up and there are nice smooth granite boulders that you can use to swim in pools in the river. It was very hot today. Val's thermometer read 38 in the shade which seemed about right. We had our lunch sitting under a giant olive tree and a stray dog came along to join us and get some water and food. Anne brought some paté de quince and Corsican cheese for all of us as a treat, and Hilary brought strawberries. We dropped down to the river and had a nice cool swim. The stream comes off the high mountains to the west that still have snow. After that we headed back to town. Along the way we saw some large Corsican pines and lots of immortelle plants.Read more