Two people have made Corsica famous: Napoleon Bonaparte, who was born on this proud, volcanic island and the anthropologist Dorothy Carrington.
Arriving in 1948, Carrington set about getting to know the "granite island", the title of her classic travelogue. Travelling on local buses and on foot, she met seers and murderers, shepherds and fishermen. She fell for the cerulean sea. She never sat still.
I don’t know what got into her. On my trip to Corsica, to the unspoilt Valinco Gulf in the southwest of the island, I lay about, morning, noon and afternoon. I blame the time of year, and the sea and our beautiful villa that sat on the edge of it.
There was a tiny cove at the foot of our villa’s lawned garden and though we had a huge pool back at the beach house we kept it for after-dinner dips and the hammock for shaded siestas. We made the cove our own: we took our morning coffee there, and our naps, the hours marked by a swim out to the horizon and back again, over and over. Two kayaks came with the villa and we took them out every day towards Propriano Bay that stretched out to our left, or towards Porto Pollo a little further up the Valinco Gulf.
But how to describe a sea so mesmerising that the idea of leaving it — to walk through chestnut-filled forests — was anathema? Baby-bath warm and bejewelled-blue, for sure, but also "so blue that one would eat it" — Matisse’s words nail how Corsica’s translucent sea makes you hungry for more.
For lunchtime we picked up local produce from the endless suppliers who announced "produits Corses" for sale down side-roads off the corkscrew coastal road. Back at our villa, the long dining table heaved with fresh prawns, mountain cheeses, fig jam, AOC honey from the ancient town of Sartene, olives, bread and savoury tarts made with brocciu (a mild, French ewe’s-milk cheese, also used in the island’s famous fiadone, a lemon ricotta cheesecake) from the nearby bakery.
There was always a bottle of Patrimonio rose on the go.
Three days in, we did leave our cove — to have breakfast in a cafe overlooking yet another glorious white sandy beach, this one at Porto Pollo, a quiet, best-kept secret full of locals, across the bay from Propriano.
A 15-minute drive away is Filitosa, home to the Neolithic settlements and statue-menhirs (standing stones, carved with human features) and torri — or towers — that Dorothy Carrington made famous.
Sartene, a mountaintop hamlet and wine region 14km inland from Propriano, was once described by Carmen author Prosper Merimee as "the most Corsican of Corsican cities". It has a well-preserved old town, quaint restaurants hidden down alleyways, and a 16th-century echauguette (lookout tower) for pirate-spotting. We instead spotted tourists as we sat in the cafe-filled Place Porta, the main square, with a tasty glass of Sartenais wine.
We were able to take in the monumental coastline during an unmissable two-hour boat trip we took from Cargese, a more bijou hill town with a pretty harbour, 100km north of Propriano.
A boat tour company took us out to see the Calanques de Piana, the red granite sea stacks and cliffs that are part of the Unesco-listed Scandola Nature Reserve. We dipped into caves, spotted eagles’ nests and counted several Genoese watchtowers.
Afterwards, for our holiday’s final hurrah, we had a fresh seafood lunch at U Rasaghiu, which has a prime spot overlooking the harbour. — The Observer
