As we were moving today, we got up fairly early and got the tent packed up and ready to go. Before packing it all in the car, we got some bread for breakfast and ate before we packed the chairs and table.
Once off the camp site we headed down the D81 again towards Galeria, the route we had taken yesterday. We briefly called in at Galeria as I had lost my glasses and wanted to see if I'd left them there - no such luck.
Into new territory, we continued south down the D81 heading towards Osani. First the road wriggled and climbed up to the Col de Palmerella at 408M and then down to the Col de la Croix at 269M. Although many of these passes don't seem very high compared to Alpine passes, the Corsican ones are quite often right on the coast and 400 metres directly above the sea is very spectacular.
The views from the next stretch of road were particularly good looking towards Porto. The road winding around the cliffs and over headlands with the sea hundreds of metres below most of the time.
When we got to Porto, we drove into town, parked close to the sea and sat and had a drink at a cafe overlooking the town and the impressive fort or watchtower.
Suitably fortified, we headed back up to the cliff-tops and travelled along a section of the road known as Les Calanques, which refer to the rocky inlets below. It is very touristy and there were several coaches manouevering along the narrow winding road so we didn't stop. One cafe we passed had a long line of coach travellers standing in a queue waiting to use the toilet! The joys of coach travel.
The road continued south through Cargese and Sagone, famous for its wines. Not long afterwards we stopped on a headland near Liamone and walked to some picnic tables to eat our lunch. We had no sooner started eating than it started to spit with rain. We had seen the dark clouds but thought we were ahead of them. This very brief shower lasting for no more than five minutes exactly coincided with the time we were eating - what are the chances of that especially as it was the only rain we had encountered the whole time we had been on the island!
After lunch we climbed up to the Col de Bastiano at 411M and then the Col de Listincone at 232M before dropping down to sea-level on the approach to Ajaccio.
We managed to avoid going through town and found our campsite near Porticcio very easily and after a quick look around decided to stop. The site was very shady but had nice pitches so we set up tent.
We then set out to explore the immediate area and drove along the coast through Porticcio to Ile de Isoletta and Verghia. To us, Porticcio was a bit too touristy, like a sort of French/Italian Skegness, but with nicer restaurants. As it was Sunday, everybody was out and about so it was really crowded so we gave up and returned to the campsite.
Later, we went back to Porticcio and had a wonderful wood-fired oven cooked pizza at a restaurant right on the beach.
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