York Alpine Club Blog

Corsica has plenty of all of the latter and Tracy had one of the former. Joining Tracy in her celebrations Dan, Jules, Pete Bradshaw and I started the holiday in a south London curry house and followed by cake and champers and bed by 10! Leaving Dan behind at stupid o'clock we set off for Gatwick and a 2hr sleep flight. Our accommodation was a fine newish house in the Haute Corse, a small village Veraco, where we met the landlord in the Bar Central and chilled. Being up high meant we were going to have to drive up and down quite a few times and whilst central, may not be the best place to base yourself if you want to get about.

Famous for the GR20 – one of the best and toughest long distance walks through spectacular mountains, Corsica is a real playground for the active person. We only walked a tiny bit of the trail but its now on the tick list. A week is nowhere near enough time to explore all that is to be offered but as our aim was a bit of all sorts and a chilled holiday. Bolt clipping (there are some awesome trad alpine style routes on offer but too much hassle for a relaxed holiday) Via Feratta and beaches were our stated aims.

Climbing is a mix of limestone and mostly granite, no holds and weird holes – strange combination. Well bolted and masses of easy (F4, F5 even some F3) routes to have a pop at in all manner of locations. We climbed at the Col de Bevalla at 1400m and on the beach itself. Mostly the routes were quite short and in Sept not too busy. We managed a couple of multipitch – which were really good.

There are 5 Via Ferrata (VF) listed the island, though we couldn't buy the guide on the island (not for want of trying).

We were told that they are all private (ie cost money) and have to hire their kit. These VF are not like the traditional routes through the mountains, they are designed activities in 'adventure parks ' which means they lack some character but are often quite hairy scary. We managed to get on one reckoned to be amongst the best in France, and it was definitely fun, more so as we failed to find anyone to pay 🙂 Great fun but don't bother going to Corsica just to do these and expect to pay 20..30 euros for the pleasure.

One of the great pleasures in going to the med in Sept is not only have the Euros gone home from their holidays but the sun has done its job on the Med and its warm enough for even Jules to swim. With virtually no industry there is little pollution and beaches range from excellent sand to pebbles – usually very clean and always safe. Great way to relax after the driving about, take a snorkel! We'd hoped to get a few dips in some stream pools of which there are many excellent ones but this time of year you need full sun to warm you up when getting out, midday is better but we never made that. Still next time..

Far too many pictures on Rob's Pictures Site

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 12:16 pm and is filed under Climbing, Crags, Extended trips, Walking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.