We sat outside last night in out rural seaside location taking in the stars talking, about the day and looking for the satellite string created by SpaceX. We never saw it, but we did notice cloud patches covering large parts of the night sky. This morning, wouldn’t you know it, we woke to a cloudy sky threatening rain. We shared a bit of food, checked out and continued our southern drift, destination Sarténe.
In all honesty it wasn’t one of our most exciting days, but this is the nature of travel, and for that matter distance walking. Most days are amazing and interesting while other days (fortunately very few) are just meant to be transit days.
I know there will be questions and I’ve tried to anticipate them and provide answers.🙄 Were there windy roads today? Yes, but not as intense as our other Corsican drives. Could we have picked a more tortuous route and made a better experience to share? Yes, but it’s a better process on a sunny day and it rained on and off today making for less fun driving conditions, though admittedly a less satisfying blog post. Did we have fun today? Yes, always, but we had slightly less fun than usual. Will there be more adventures in the days ahead? Absolutely! Will United beat Bayern Munich tonight? On the basis of information available and team injuries, not very likely.
So off we went. we were in a large group of cars on some miserable roads so I stopped for a look see.
The rain was sporadic and not heavy, and it did get up to a humid 30° today.
Back underway there was suddenly little traffic and the driving was more pleasant again. The closer we got to Ajaccio, where you’ll recall we started this adventure, the heavier traffic became. Often bumper to bumper. Largest city on Corsica and it draws a corresponding percentage of the island traffic. We got a little messed up at one point, but reversed direction at a roundabout and we were soon on our way again and past the back side of the airport.
For ease of driving we stayed on the T40 (the red road) for quite a while. The fastest you can go on it is 110, but usually 90 and even more often down to 80. That’s the theory. The reality is that even on the main highways speeds seldom get to 80. To put this in perspective, the crazy roads we’ve been driving this week are posted at 80, but we all know that it’s impossible in most underpowered small cars like our Peugeot 208 to get much beyond 35 kph in second gear! Any faster and most cars would be sitting at the bottom of the many shear cliffs!
We turned off on to again some seriously windy side roads on our way to Filitosa, a prehistoric site from the Bronze Age 1600 – 1100 BC. We had no idea what to expect, but it was very interesting if you’re into that sort of thing. Annemarie liked it.🙂 Turns out there are quite a few sites on Corsica, but this is the best one.
This is a Menhirs. Usually tall structures that in this area are up to 4000 years old.
We’ve seen them principally when walking in France, mostly on the Arles Chemin. However, when we had a car in Portugal in 2019 after walking the Camino Norte we saw huge numbers at Menhir dos Almendres east of Lisbon. They are quiet wide reaching and also into Britain.
The ones here were super interesting because they are so tall. Usually about half the height in my experience.
More of the excavated village.
We walked down off the hill where the village was located and across to the quarry where all the massive stones were dragged from.
I suspect that my late Uncle Geoff would have been quite interested in all this. I know he read extensively about these sorts of things.
From here we drove on to Propriano for a late lunch.
Then it was on to our place for the night, Sarténe, an old city on a hill (where else). It a very expensive place to be so we are staying out of town in a more reasonably priced place, though it’s more expensive than we usually pay. We will need to drive up shortly to find dinner (anything but pizza please) and have a look around. We will also stop there in the morning to find breakfast on our way through to somewhere new.
Cheers!
Geoff
Distance Walker - Wandering & Wondering! 