05.15.09

Corsica

Posted in Climbing, Hollidays at 10:12 am by tesstess

Corte

What is better than having 10 days of vacation in front of you, staying at a horse farm (knowing how much I love horses) and climbing in the wild and beautiful nature?

We started our vacation in Corte, a small village in the middle of Corsica. From Nice we took the boat with the car, 6 hours to reach Bastia. And then about an hour to Corte.

The first morning was nice, the discovery of the mountains and the nature, and with horses everywhere.

 

Just next to Corte lays ‘la vallee de la Restonica’, where we climbed the first three days.

 

Two new things found: mountain of granit and wild cyklamen.

First day I was still having a bit of a cold and wasn’t in the best climbing shape, we stayed on a normal climbing site and felt for the first time this new kind of rock.

After the climbing we went back to the farm and went on a horse ride. And I forgot to bring my camera! 45 min up on a mountain, beautiful view, and 45 min down. Wonderful horses, arabs, as made for the difficult terrain. Then we ate at the place we’re staying. It’s a special atmosphere among people staying at bed&breakfast, everyone talks and tells stories, not as in a resturant where it’s almost taboo to talk to the neighbour. It surprised us this first evening, when we came and sat down at the long table and 15 people asked us what we had done during the day, where we came from and where we were going.
The second day we went to climb a summit called Sorbello, a 180 meter long route, divided in 4 parts, most of them 6a. But first we had to get there, this is what blocked our way:

 

First goats on the road, in corsica they let all animals just go free everywhere: goats, pigs, cows, dogs, and even horses in one place. Then, everytime we wanted to find the beginning of a route, it took us 45 minutes of searching for the path. Anthony had shorts and his legs was full of scratches after. The bushes are nice to look at with flowers and all, but there are lots of evil things with torns in there as well.

This rock has so funny shapes! They were wonderful to climb in. And often they made perfect wholes for the ‘breakpoints’.

Off towards heaven. Here I’m climbing the last section, it’s a 6a.

 

This is how I look just before I go climbing in first, full with roaps, and quickdraws, and a smile which says ‘look at me, I’m so good and I’ll climb in first’. Or something like that. Always as nice to be up on the top and make the mandatory summit photo. In my photos page there are some more photos of the climbing itself if you want to see. I’ll only write about a selection.

The third day we went to a normal climbing site (not a mountain to reach the summit). I was in a good mood and managed to climb a beautiful 6a+ in first, and a 6b in second.

Anthony climbed the 6b in first on the second try.

Bavella

We said good bye to the horses, Corte and Restoinica and drove 2 hours down to Bavella, the mountains in the south.

Found on the way:

Beautiful views. Pigs on the road. Anthony went and touched them, me I was a bit sceptic.

 

The climbing of the day was ended after the first step because it started to rain. To bad. On the photos you see the 6a+ we climbed. It’s flat, more flat even than you can see. And nothing to hold on to. You put your hands flat on the rock and hope the degree of leaning of the wall is big enough for you to not slide down. Very particular style. And then just after you have those big ‘tafoni’, as the formations are called in the corsica language. Where you can climb roofs without problems, the wholes for hands and feet are big and confortable.
We stayed in a small village called Quenza, in a, from the outside quite ugly bed&breakfast, and from the inside, one of the most beautifully decorated houses I’ve been in.

 

Our room with mezzanine and Vietnam style.

 

Here are the rooms for apperitif and dinner.

A bit left of the middle of the photo you see a ’smooth’ mountain. It’s a very famous route going there, called ‘the back of the elephant’. It’s mentioned in the book of over the most beautiful routes of the world, one of the easiest routes in that book, but still a very, very hard one. And of course the dream of Anthony to climb this one with me…

But first we had to warm up.

The meteo announced the worst weather of all this week for the second day in Bavella. Sun in the morning but thunder and rain in the afternoon. I think initially we had planned to do normal climbing but since it’s much more beautiful to climb up to a top we decided to try a long route, but short to be long, only 130m. It should be only 30 min walk to get there, but in fact the guide counted the walk from a refuge, to which Anthony calculated with the map that it should be another 30 min, so I was ok to try it thinking that it was ok to be a bit wet on the return walk, and if it started raining during the climb we would just go down like yesterday.

 

Well, it turned out that what was quite short on the map in reality was very steep paths - it was a 2 hour walk just to get to the refuge. The path was in the forest, so beautiful and calm. The sun shining and the temperature perfect for walking. We were following the very famous path named GR20, so no risk to take the wrong path, just to follow the small red and white marks.

In our plan was also that there would be a gardien in the refuge and that we would stop by there to eat lunch on the way back but it’s still to early in the season and the gardien had not yet moved out.

When beginning to climb we could see the clouds over Bavella, but on top of us only blue sky and a warm sun. After the first lenght of four we saw that the clouds had grown bigger, we felt some drops, but we thought still that they would stay over there. In the third lenght it started to rain, quite a lot even when it was my turn to climb, and we even heard the thunder far away. The relai was not too good to use for going down on so we decided to have a look at the last lenght. First it we had to walk 20 meters to find the start of it, it stopped raining but everything was wet. It’s very slippery to climb when wet…

 

Luckily the last lenght was climbing using a crack, so Anthony could put ‘friends’ (his own points) in several places between the real points. It was a 6a and quite hard even in dry weather. Next to the crack was simply a flat wall, leaning, but without anything for the hands. Anthony managed at last to reach the summit, and I managed on my turn to climb completely without using the rope or points, I was proud when at the top, as can be seen on the picture above, it’s when I’m just coming up on the top.
The name of the route has a connection to a woman that suicided there a long time ago, the name is ‘La fille qui m’accompagne’, meaning approximately ‘the girl who keeps me company’. It’s said that when climbing you can still hear the woman cry. On the summit we heard something, I thought first it was someone in the forest on the bottom who had opened a tap with water, but it was strange that it was moving from one place to another. Anthony were thinking of the woman. Then we understood that it was the thunder making these sounds, it’s like when you stand over high voltage ‘ledningar’. I wanted to go down. Quick. We found the good place to go down and in two times we reached the ground. It started to rain again. We went to get our shoes and bags, good to put the feet in real and dry shoes. And then it was just to start walking, with 2,5 hours of rain and mostly uphill infront of us.

 

In the middle of the bad luck with the weather we got to see those salamanders, only coming out in wet weather. Crazy how these ‘wet’ animals can live in a forest normally so dry all summer.

Two other wet animals. Anthony didn’t even have a rain coat and was wet all through.
We had found one package of cookies in anthonys sack, he gave me 3 and ate 1 himself just before starting climbing. When starting to walk back at 4pm we were already so hungry, and when reaching the car almost dead. Anthony was weat all through, but me I had my jacket so only the legs and feet wet.

Here is the view of ‘our’ mountain taken on the way back when the sun finally won over the rain.
I think we’re the first and only guests in the cafee in Zenza where stoped on the way back who bought and ate an ice cream and a hot chocolate at the same time. I can say it is very tasty after such an adventure.

Even more tasty was the dinner back at the bed and breakfast. Echines de porc avec pruno and tagliatelle. Super this ‘restaurant’ they have!

The last day in Bavella we climbed a route of 230m, very beautiful. After the day before I was too tired and had to dissapoint Anthony by saying I had not enough energy to try ‘the back of the elephant’.

It’s high. And here, when having to climb a bit sideways, if falling I would swing in a bow, which is worse than just falling straight down, much more risk to hurt yourself on the mountain, well, here the wall is flat, so I couldn’t really break anything. Flat also means: nothing to hold on to. Very technical and interesting climbing!

One of the middle points were like this, you secure yourself on the point, and then you ’sit’ over the emptyness, 150m up on the cliff. Stunning views.

Happy ending of the 6 days climbing.

Porto

The vacation went on to a softer mode, and we went up the west cost of Corsica as real tourists. Anthony took thousands of wonderful photos. I’m longing to have a new house so I have more place to put them up on the walls.

Anthony showed me this nice beach where he spent lots of summers as kid, fishing under water with his dad. When putting the feet in the water we never thought it was possible to swim, but then after some minutes it got better and when finally in, it was really nice!

 

A small village with lots of flowers, mostly geranium/perlagoner and roses, and two churches, one grec and one french.

How life is nice!

 

After this crazy beautiful day we finally reached Porto, where we stayed in a small cottage on a camping.

Porto with it’s big beach of small round stones.

The next day we followed a small river and stayed several hours on the small beach just under one of the bridges built on the time where Corsica belonged to Genova.

The water was freezing, just melted snow…

But who can resist so clear water?

The bravest one of us.

In the afternoon we took a walk to ‘Cappo Rosso’, a tower also built by the people from Genova.

 

 

A silent and beautiful day.

The last day of the vacation we rented a small boat.

But it’s not because no license is need that it doesn’t go fast… 9 horsepowers.

We visited the small village where the closest road is a 2 hours walk away, and most communication to the outside world is done by boat.

 

We saw mountains in all kinds of shapes, and we also saw several eagels!

We went in a small cave where the water was crystal clear and looked at all the small ‘aquarium’ fishes.

In the afternoon we took the smallest and most turning road I’ve never seen, along the coast between Porto and Calvi, to stay there over the night and take the boat to Nice the morning after.

We found a field full of flowers.

I’m so much recommending to go to this crazy beautiful island, especially in May. It was my first time, but far from the last!

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