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Destination guide to Corsica
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Much in the tourist world has no doubt changed since I last visited Corsica 30 years ago. But the wild extravagance of the rugged scenery must remain timeless.
Diversity came at the beginning of the holiday, for every means of transport was used — the bus, the tube, the train and a plane which seemed to be one of the Wright Brothers' rejects!
Our accommodation, just outside Ajaccio, was in a series of coal sheds politely called bungalows.
It was with some trepidation that we viewed the constant stream of enormous ants which passed the front door. Fortunately, they stayed outside but the same could not be said of a friendly mouse who came every evening to share our chocolate.
The bungalows were close to the beach.
The heat, even in September, was such that there was no difficulty in getting dry after a dip in the sea.
Ajaccio, remarkable for the sombre black dresses of the majority of the ladies, is soaked in the history of Napolean. The curator of the local museum told us all about the house where Napolean was born.
A trip down the west coast through Sartene revealed spectacular scenery.
The weathering of the granite peaks in one spot gave the impression of a lion sprawled across the mountain top.
Bonifacio in the extreme south was made up of tiny cobbled streets. Boat trips across the bay revealed the lighthouse and the extraordinary caves which penetrate the cliffs.
The town is said to be one of the most curious of the Mediterranean ports and second only, for interest, to Valetta.
An excursion into the interior of the island brought us some of the most startling and impressive scenery which it is possible to imagine.
Many of the roads through the gorges of Spelunca past Le Cinto, the highest mountain in Corsica, were little more than precipitous tracks — calculated to bring a chill to the stomach of any indifferent travellers.
This led us to Vizzavona Pass.
Finally we visited Corte, the ancient capital of Corsica, with its fabulous Citadelle perched high on the rocks.
A donkey decided to be friendly and only with great difficulty was he prevented from boarding our bus!
The holiday ended as it began at Ajaccio Airport. We returned to England with an indelible memory of some incredible mountain scenery to which no words can possibly do true justice. ... more Everyone for tennis, then dinner is served The pinnacle of my tennis career has to be in the late Seventies, when I played a match with Bill Threlfall at the Hurlingham Club which was filmed for TV's Nationwide. Bill was one of the BBC's Wimbledon commentators and had been giving me lessons on and off for a couple of years. Since then my tennis has lapsed. It was earlier this year that I saw a chance to brush up on my game. During a week sailing in the Caribbean I met Ian Campbell and his girlfriend Kay Adams, the television presenter. They were filming for a Scottish holiday programme and over a rum punch one evening I discovered Ian ran Tuscan Tennis Holidays - tennis coaching weeks in Tuscany, Spain's Costa del Sol and Sardinia. It was too good an opportunity to miss. I decided to try a first visit to Sardinia. Our accommodation was on Puntaldia, a flower-filled headland on the northeast coast of the island, where clusters of att ractive Spanish-style houses had been built as holiday homes.
Our studio apartments were self-catering, but most nights we ate out as a group, trying out local restaurants and a lot of seafood pasta.
There were 12 of us - a lively, interesting group, and several had been on Ian's tennis weeks before and played regularly.
The first morning on court our tennis was assessed and videoed. It could be replayed in slow motion or stopped so we could see instantly what we were doing wrong.
Ian's comment to me was: 'Val, it's obvious you've had lessons but not a lot of practice.'
There was a giggle from the others. Meeting my tennis group at Alghero airport the day before, I'd zipped my racquet out of its cover to an instant chorus of 'You haven't taken the wrapping off'.
How embarrassing - the handle was still tightly bound in shiny cellophane. Ian was spot on. ... more The old master of the Med We discovered Corsica in 1973 when, as a young family with three small children, we had a chaotic introduction to the island. Staying in a beach house over-run by ants, we found our one credit card rejected without explanation in the only local restaurant, leaving us permanently short of ready cash. Then, having been let down by our car hire company, we were forced to ferry our food several miles a day in the panniers of a borrowed 'motocyclette'. It might easily have been a horrible holiday, but the reverse was the case. No matter how difficult things were, each day we fell deeper in love with Corsica, with the scent of the maquis (that blanket of bushes and herbs which covers the lower hills of the island), the pine forests and the empty white beaches. In fact, we were so convinced that we had discovered Paradise that throughout the Seventies we returned to different parts of the island. Then, one year we saw something terrible. A whole valley had been burned by a forest fire the day before we got there - started by tourists, it was said - and it seemed to us, in that cindered desolation, that Corsica's innocence had been lost.
After that we stayed away for more than 20 years, afraid to see any further desecration - until this summer when, desperate for some sun, we booked the only Corsican villa and flight we could find.
We made our way to the west coast where we'd started out all those years ago. It was all just as lovely as we'd remembered.
Obviously, there had been some building in the past 30 years, but not as much as expected. ... more I lost my heart to a blind date From the Mail on Sunday Booking a self-catering holiday, like getting married again, is often a triumph of hope over experience. But with a second marriage, unless you are marrying a mail-order bride from Ulan Bator, at least you get the chance of a good look at your prospective partner. With self-catering, it's a blind date. Holiday brochures are not allowed to tell you lies, but painful experience has taught us that they can be extremely economical with the truth. And brochure photographs provide living evidence that the camera not only lies but lies through its teeth. So we took the brochure claim that our self-catering property in Corsica would offer 'luxury' with a pinch of salt. All we asked was a cooker that worked and a swimming pool that contained neither live frogs nor dead rodents (we've encountered both in our time). When we rounded the corner of the road at the bottom o f the Marine de Davia and got our first glimpse of the Villa Delphine we could scarcely believe our eyes.
From the outside, the house looked less like a holiday home and more like the sort of hi-tech seaside lair where Blofeld would be plotting the downfall of 007.
The upstairs had the retro style of a Thirties liner with a curved stern deck rail fronting an enormous wooden sun-deck. Downstairs had something of a Guggenheim art gallery surrounding it.
Inside, things were even more sensational: mod cons included allover air-conditioning, satellite TV, a plunge pool with water-jet swim system, a hi-fi - even an ice-making machine.
The front room had a massive picture window which looked over the curved swimming pool towards the Mediterranean, which was washing up at the bottom of the garden.
Not a dead mouse to be seen. ... more Hire your own Hugo From the Daily Mail To have one's identity defined by smell is rarely a bonus. Think of Venice on a hot summer's day, or London on a cold one. Think of grid-locked Los Angeles or sweat-stained Calcutta - all have odours that manipulate the senses and colour the judgement. The Mediterranean island of Corsica, however, has a smell that is as famous for being good as the above are for being bad. Infrequently, in fact, do you read or hear about Corsica without reference to the maquis, a loosely collective term for the aromatic herbs and plants that flourish in profusion over broad sweeps of the island's mountainous landscape. So sweet and evocative is the scent of the maquis that expatriated Corsicans have been known to weep with nostalgia at a whiff of their homeland. But we wept with frustration. Our flight from the UK had been badly delayed and we arrived in Figari, Corsica's southern airport, some time after nigh tfall.
Intent on driving four tired children the 36 miles to our base, I was in no frame of mind for sentimental claptrap about flowers.
But there it was, wafting through the car windows, a sweet dusky smell of heathery rosiness tinged with the scent of the sea and the warmth of the night air. The perfect tonic at the end of a long day to the rigours of travelling en famille.
Our base, if it can be so crudely termed, was a large, converted wine tower, chunkier than Rapunzel would have had it, but completely circular nonetheless, with commanding views across the shimmering blue of the Gulf of Valinco to the small town of Propriano on the far side of the bay.
There were eight bedrooms in all, divided among the tower's four floors, and three kitchens: one on the top (a good getaway but slightly impractical); a second on the middle (car-level, so handy for the shopping); the third at the bottom (semi-alfresco, near the pool and complete with barbecue, ice machine and shady terrace. We liked this one best).
It was the ideal set up for two families. Our gang - two adults and four children - took the top two floors; our friends - two adults and three children - took the bottom. Which left us one room spare: we filled it with Hugo. ... more
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