Thursday 30th November 2017

First thing this morning a big ferry came in and docked at the ferry terminal at Porto Vecchio close to where we were parked overnight.

Before leaving Porto Vecchio we sneaked our van into the area of the harbour reserved for professional fishing persons and used their water supply to fill our fresh water tank. What with the Harbourmasters's posh toilets yesterday and this today I'm beginning to think we are chancing our arm sometimes!

Having done a supermarket shop we finally left Porto Vecchio and moved to the coast on the south west side of Corsica. We stopped at this marvelous view point called Roccapina.

There are some very interesting granite rocks around here.

We moved on to Cauria to visit the megalithic sites there. The road down to the sites was in very poor condition so we left the van and walked.

This is the Stantari Alignment.

Some of the menhirs have faces carved onto them.

Here's another menhir with a "face".

This is the alignment of Renaju. Situated in a grove of trees, enigmatic and difficult to photograph adequately. This place has a potent aura to it!

The third site here is the Dolmen of Fontanaccia. This is a burial chamber which would have originally been covered with an earth mound which has eroded away.

These three sites are in a remote location surrounded by stupendous granite rock formations.

From Cauria we drove down to the coast at Tizzano but not finding anywhere nice to park for the day we retraced our route and stopped at the town of Sartene where we found this very large, very flat and almost empty car park quite close the the town centre. We didn't venture into town as we both had some degree of megalithic back.


Today we traveled 63 miles (101 kilometres). We are at N41.61931  E8.96991


Sartene

Wednesday 29th November 2017

It rained off and on during the night at Marine de Solaro. In the morning we noticed that we had been joined overnight by a massive d.i.y. camper with Spanish number plates and a small red car with Italian plates which were obviously together. We set off south down the coast road and stopped for the day at Porto Vecchio. After surreptitiously emptying our toilet cassette in the very posh loos at the Harbourmaster's Office we found this nice parking place by the sea. It was raining. Here's the view from our van.

We saw this Egret on a nearby rock. (Thanks Tony and Jane for giving me its correct identity). 

To our amazement the huge d.i.y. camper and the little red car who had parked near us last night turned up yet again and parked a few metres away from us. They have two big dogs. Here's the camper.

Eventually the rain eased off a bit and we took a walk up to the old town on the hill. Here's the view looking back towards the harbour.

With a bit of telephoto we could see our van and the big d.i.y. job.

We entered the old town through this old gate.

Here's the church. The place was absolutely ravished by road works.

We eventually found an open food shop and  bought a loaf of bread. As we made our way back down the hill to our parking place we saw this nicely coloured tree.

Today we traveled 32 miles (52 kilometres). We are at N41.58897 E9.28620

Porto Vecchio

Tuesday 28th November 2017

This morning we bought new windscreen wiper blades for our van at the garage just over the road from our parking place in Moriani Plage as our existing ones were falling apart and the forecast is for rain in this area over the next few days! We moved on south down the east coast of Corsica  to Aleria. Here is a view of the village centre.

The village is on a hill looking down towards the mountains on one side. On the other side it looks down towards the sea. No wonder the old people chose this as a site to build a city. They started about 2500 years ago.

We visited the Greek/Roman ruins here. The site is very extensive and up till now only a fraction of it has been excavated.

 

There is an interesting church in the village.

The inside of the church seems quite austere for a southern  European catholic church.

 

What does the painting behind the alter depict? Anne-Marie from Laracor might be able to help?

We visited the museum of artifacts excavated from the site.

There is an amazing range of fantastic artifacts from the site on view here. It is great to see them in a local museum - I imagine if this kind of stuff had been dug up in Britain it would all be in the British Museum in London. 

Jupiter.

We moved on a little further down the east coast of Corsica and stopped for the day at Marine de Solaro. We're parked right on the sea front. Here's the view through our windscreen.

This temporarily abandoned beach bar is just next to where we are parked. It's dark now and it has started to rain.

To day we traveled 48 miles (77 kilometres). We are at N41.89135 E9.40102

Marine de Solero

Monday 27th November 2017

This morning we left Macinaggio and headed south down the east coast of Cap Corse. Just north of Bastia we stopped briefly for Ann to investigate this grandiose cemetery.

Our sat nav managed to take us round rather than through Bastia (the largest city on Corsica) and from there on to the Etang de Biguglia, a large wetland area. We stopped to look at the roman ruins at Mariana.

Also here is the impressive 12th Century church of Santa Maria Assunta which was apparently built of stone pilfered from the adjoining roman ruins.

The inside of the church is quite austere.

There are some interesting markings on the doorstep at the front of the church.

We moved on south down the east coast of Corsica and stopped for the day at Moriani Plage where we found this nice quiet unrestricted car park by the sea. Ann did some van cleaning.

We took a walk around town and saw this plaque.

A multilingual sign interprets the plaque's meaning. Corsica was sold to France by the Genoans and is still not an independent country to this day.

We visited the tourist office and picked up a free tourist map of Corsica. You can look down to this display in the tourist office basement.

I imagine this tells you what all the items in the display are. 

We went out for a meal in a restaurant by the car park we are staying at. Ann had Pizza and Tiramisu. I had fish soup, grilled fish and a local style apple tart. We had a bottle of local wine to go with the meal.

Today we traveled 62 miles (100 kilometres). We are at N42.37561 E9.53174

Moriani Plage

Sunday 26th November 2017

It was very very windy during the night and is still very windy this morning. During the night we moved the van so that instead of it being side on to the wind it was heading into it. This reduced the violent shaking of the van and we were able to get to sleep.

In this area of Cap Corse cattle roam freely in the low bush which covers most of the hillsides.

We wandered around Tollare for a while looking at the enormous waves.

Very impressive seas.

The chapel was locked.

I didn't investigate what this cross by the chapel was about as it was rather near to the very angry sea!

We moved on the short distance to the town of Macinaggio. There are quite a lot of unfriendly signs hereabouts!

We found an unrestricted parking place next to the harbour and stopped for the day. Here's the view out of the windscreen of our van.

We had a walk around town and bought two loaves of bread. This place seems to have sold it's soul to the god of pleasure boating. There is every facility for boats but all camper vanners find is unfriendly signs!

A Corsica Ferries ship went by. They still haven't replied to my email complaining about our shoddy treatment on board.

We walked along the coastal path going west from town.

The path soon climbed up into the low bush. I think they call it Maquis round here.

We came across this old cannon.

We saw this old defensive tower on a island out to sea.

We can see the Italian island of Elba from around here. It looks quite mountainous.

There were some impressive breaking waves on the rocks below the coastal path.

This was as far as we got. We turned round and retraced our steps to Macinaggio.

This evening the wind has finally died right down. Here's the view through our van windscreen now that it has got dark.

Today we traveled 11 miles (18 kilometres). We are at N42.95888 E9.45328

Macinaggio