Two Go to Corsica

[DBK]

@DBK You've certainly whetted our appetite to return to Le Corse sooner rather than later. Not this year though as tomorrow we are setting off following in your footsteps to Sicily.

Though we are cheating by taking the ferry from Toulon to Trapani, 19 hours but saving 3 or 4 days travel.

We will explore elements of Italy on the return journey.


Keep Posting.

Best wishes for your trip to Sicily. We might do Sardinia next year and an option would be to return via Sicily, taking the ferry to Palermo, but fitting it all in to the time available will be the challenge.

 

[DBK]

A bit like @Mousy we haven't done a lot today although the weather in Greece looks better than here where it has been mostly overcast with a little bit of sun this afternoon. The forecast is more optimistic and suggests things will improve by the middle of the week.

We visited Port du Centuri again this morning but well before lunch so we wouldn't be tempted.

A pile of multicoloured fishing nets made an interesting shot.

@Ridgeway and @scousebird recommended Brebis cheese earlier in this thread.

I'm looking forward to trying it.

Anyone worried about large wasps should avoid the next photo.

The Mammoth wasp, Megascolia maculata, and the largest European wasp lives around here. This one, a female, was about 3.5 cm long at a guess, it wouldn't stand still long enough to allow me to measure it. They can grow bigger too. . But they are harmless to humans and prey exclusively on the larva of Rhinoceros beetles. They have been seen in southern England apparently but as we don't have Rhinoceros beetles they can't get established - yet!

 

[DBK]

Edit to above. It's a male Mammoth wasp I think, smaller than the females and with short antenna. A bit like humans I guess.

 

[Fenman]

Love the shot of the nets.

 

[Hilewaychile]

A marvellous account of your trip. Very enjoyable and most informative. I have a notion to go to Sicily via Sardinia. As I will be starting from Valencia that means Barcelona > Porto Torres to 'cut the corner' then Caligilari > Palermo.

Links to Funsters experiences of Sardinia and/or Sicily would be very welcome.

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[DBK]

A marvellous account of your trip. Very enjoyable and most informative. I have a notion to go to Sicily via Sardinia. As I will be starting from Valencia that means Barcelona > Porto Torres to 'cut the corner' then Caligilari > Palermo.

Links to Funsters experiences of Sardinia and/or Sicily would be very welcome.

We visited Sicily a couple of years ago and had a superb trip. A description starts at post #88 on this page.

https://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/forum/threads/two-go-to-sicily.159019/page-5

 

[DBK]

A longish hop today as we have been in Corsica a week and have about three and a half weeks left here so we need to move a bit faster if we are to stand any chance of seeing the rest of the island.

The first two hours of of driving today were quite testing. Endless bends on the coast road and some scary drops in places. The drop to the sea is at least 100m according to Google Maps. I'm now almost regretting my decision to drive around the island anti-clockwise - it puts me the driver nearest the edge!

The traffic was generally very light but there were a lot of motorcycles and I met two big buses, one behind the other but fortunately at a place they could squeeze past me.

This bit of dashcam video is not untypical of today's driving. I didn't get above third gear for two hours!



But the scenery was spectacular.

This is the little town of Pino.

The last bit of today was through the Désert des Agriates. It may not look like it now but this area was once the "breadbasket" of Corsica but the fields were virtually all abandoned a long time ago and the maquis took over. We saw similar evidence of decline on the coast road. Under the trees bordering the road we saw old terracing.

We are going to stay for a couple of nights or so in Calvi, it has an impressive high-walled citadel for us to explore and is where Napoléon was born. The only downside is the weather is a bit miserable and it won't start to improve until about Tuesday but from Wednesday onwards, according to the forecast we should have some reliable sunshine.

 

[Figaro]

That road looks like a lot of roads in Wales with that low stone wall ! Appears very smooth and we'll maintained though.
Enjoying your travels, thanks for sharing

 

[DBK]

That road looks like a lot of roads in Wales with that low stone wall ! Appears very smooth and we'll maintained though.
Enjoying your travels, thanks for sharing

The surfaces of the roads encountered so far have been excellent on the island. I'm not so sure about the wall on the edge of the road in the clip. It had a few disturbing gaps. I wouldn't trust it to stop 3.5t.

 

[Hilewaychile]

Many thanks for the link. Looks like another superb report.

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[Figaro]

Having, looked again at you thread on my laptop as opposed to phone, I`m really impressed with the colour and clarity of your photos.
May I ask what camera your using and if you enhance them at all.
The focus on the close up`s is also spot on

 

[DBK]

Having, looked again at you thread on my laptop as opposed to phone, I`m really impressed with the colour and clarity of your photos.
May I ask what camera your using and if you enhance them at all.
The focus on the close up`s is also spot on

I use an Olympus OM-D 10 and most of the flower shots are taken with an Olympus 60mm Macro lens.

I have to confess I do fiddle with the images a bit. I started out with the editing tools in Google Photos, which are good but I now use what used to be called Adobe Lightroom Mobile but which now goes by the name of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This is available for Android and iOS and from reviews I've read the latter is better just as the iOS version of Photoshop is on desk machines but I'm restricted to Android at the moment. When this tablet expires I will look seriously at an iPad - they are good value for money now.

I only upload to this forum small jpeg files, about 1200 pixels wide but my camera also stores a RAW version which is over 4000 pixels wide and these I may use later.

The Adobe app allows me to select part of an image and then alter that part only, typically reducing or enhancing exposure. You can also enhance colours and sharpen images.

I took this shot outside and it is a bit challenging as there are parts over exposed due to the sunshine. This is the original.

Using the Adobe app I selected the over exposed bits in the top right and reduced the exposure here. The colours have also been enhanced and the image sharpened. I'm sure many won't see the difference but it keeps me amused.

You can also alter geometry.

Before:

After:

 

[Hilewaychile]

I use an Olympus OM-D 10 and most of the flower shots are taken with an Olympus 60mm Macro lens.

I have to confess I do fiddle with the images a bit. I started out with the editing tools in Google Photos, which are good but I now use what used to be called Adobe Lightroom Mobile but which now goes by the name of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. This is available for Android and iOS and from reviews I've read the latter is better just as the iOS version of Photoshop is on desk machines but I'm restricted to Android at the moment. When this tablet expires I will look seriously at an iPad - they are good value for money now.

I only upload to this forum small jpeg files, about 1200 pixels wide but my camera also stores a RAW version which is over 4000 pixels wide and these I may use later.

The Adobe app allows me to select part of an image and then alter that part only, typically reducing or enhancing exposure. You can also enhance colours and sharpen images.

I took this shot outside and it is a bit challenging as there are parts over exposed due to the sunshine. This is the original.

View attachment 306417

Using the Adobe app I selected the over exposed bits in the top right and reduced the exposure here. The colours have also been enhanced and the image sharpened. I'm sure many won't see the difference but it keeps me amused.

View attachment 306416

You can also alter geometry.

Before:

View attachment 306418

After:

View attachment 306419

Lightroom - one of the wonders of the cyber world. As an old pro who spent early/apprentice years in photography as a darkroom technician I can say that LR has given photography back to me. It is everything we used to do in b/w printing but much, much more. The limitations of hardware and 'film' are now reduced to practically nothing. Correcting verticals by nudging a slider is a lot more convenient than using a plate camera or tilting the enlarger head!

It's very easy to use. What you see, when you make changes, is what you get and at no stage is the original altered. You have simply created another version, when you save your fettled picture.

LR is best used with RAW files. These are flat as a pancake, dull as ditchwater, unuseable, straight off the card. They have to be processed to look good. But they do contain every scrap of data. It is amazing how one can pull detail out of severely dark or over-exposed images.

You can fettle JPGs, though there is not as much scope for enhancement because JPGs have already been 'got at' by the JPG process.

I recommend anyone who is interested in photography beyond merely recording a scene or event to use it. Adobe have done that darstardly thing, like MS with Office, of 'renting' it out. You can still buy Lightroom 6 on stand-alone disc but it's no longer supported. Adobe want £XX pm for the so-called Creative Cloud package, which includes Ph/shop. LR was created for photographers specifically to eliminate all the PhSp graphics bells and whistles which smudgers don't need. And you have to save your stuff to Adobe's paltry cloud storage allocation [or pay for more]

As retired person, I will not rent LR. LR6 is the last version available to buy Amz or Ebay. Whatever they come up with from now on I will go without.

AS DBK has done, I offer up before and after, from the recent fiesta in Valencia of Our Lady of the Abandoned.

 

[Hilewaychile]

Having, looked again at you thread on my laptop as opposed to phone, I`m really impressed with the colour and clarity of your photos.
May I ask what camera your using and if you enhance them at all.
The focus on the close up`s is also spot on

There's a quip in photography that the best camera is the one you've got with you. Exhibitions have been shown at the NYC Met Mus of photographs taken on an iPhone. Having been in photography all my life - apart from the other bits, in rock n roll and stuff - I get asked this question a lot. To get to the answer you have to start with what you want to achieve. It's a bit like cars. There really aren't any duff ones any more - just ones that suit you better than others. You wouldn't get a BMW Z3 to tow a two-up horse box.

Don't get sold on pixels. Pixels aren't what they used to be. Cameras in phones now have masses more pixels than pro DSLRs of recent years. Image quality comes directly from sensor size, exactly as in the days of film - remember 1/2 frame? The so-called FX 'full frame' sensor [because it is the dimensions of a 35mm film image, 36mm x 24mm] in my Nikon D600 makes 30Mb images. But I take loads of pix with my phone. The cameras in phones are astonishingly capable. Here's one of a chicken casserole coming on nicely on an induction hob in my self-build. The original image on my monitor is 4x the size of this one and still nicely sharp - but only 1.3Mb

If you are serious about taking close-ups of small objects, as per the flower pix above, a phone camera will do it. Here's a close-up of a small object taken with my phone. The individual grains of dust are clearly visible. The red capacitor is the sise of a TicTac. The image on my 27" monitor is 570mm x 290mm and nicely sharp - and the original has been quite heavily cropped.

But you do get more quality and capability with better technology in a 'proper'camera. DBK's Olympus takes interchangeable lenses. You can kit out with a range of lenses to suit your interests - a telephoto for nature/sport, a close up for nature/stamps/w.h.u. , a wide angle for landscape/architucture... That Olympus is a very compact camera for its technical abilities. Or a camera with all of this in one lump. There are loads of those.

Despite never having had a 35mm camera by anyone but Nikon, for me the go-to brand for a compact camera is Canon. The range of models is enormous. There's one to suit everybody. The thing I like about Canon compacts is the ergonomics. I have found that they are better laid out and the functions better thought out than other compact brands I've had. They all take fab photos. They all have close-up mode. They all do movies. The major difference is in how much control they offer you, over and above the 'auto' functions. That's something you must decide for yourself. Following on from that the thing to decide is what zoom range you want. If you want the best chance of getting a shot of wildlife, you need the longest telephoto reach, with whatever that comes with that at the wide angle end. For me, wide angle is the priority. As soon as a decent compact came out with 24mm [35mm equivalent] I outed my 28mm lens camera.

As for fettling photos, see my 'reply' to DBK above.

 

[SiJui]

Really enjoying reading about your travels. We have been to Corsica numerous times but not in recent years or in a motorhome. We traveled extensively around the whole island in a car, and your gorgeous photos are bringing back such memories! Re your comment about the walls not stopping a large vehicle, i think its not far from where you are now if you look over the cliffside you can see the "car graveyard" in the sea! The different colours shine through in the sunshine! Not as horrific as it sounds, they are mainly from 'locals' just getting rid of their old and rusty cars !!- not through accidents !! Enjoy your trip!

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[DBK]

Lightroom - one of the wonders of the cyber world. As an old pro who spent early/apprentice years in photography as a darkroom technician I can say that LR has given photography back to me. It is everything we used to do in b/w printing but much, much more. The limitations of hardware and 'film' are now reduced to practically nothing. Correcting verticals by nudging a slider is a lot more convenient than using a plate camera or tilting the enlarger head!

It's very easy to use. What you see, when you make changes, is what you get and at no stage is the original altered. You have simply created another version, when you save your fettled picture.

LR is best used with RAW files. These are flat as a pancake, dull as ditchwater, unuseable, straight off the card. They have to be processed to look good. But they do contain every scrap of data. It is amazing how one can pull detail out of severely dark or over-exposed images.

You can fettle JPGs, though there is not as much scope for enhancement because JPGs have already been 'got at' by the JPG process.

I recommend anyone who is interested in photography beyond merely recording a scene or event to use it. Adobe have done that darstardly thing, like MS with Office, of 'renting' it out. You can still buy Lightroom 6 on stand-alone disc but it's no longer supported. Adobe want £XX pm for the so-called Creative Cloud package, which includes Ph/shop. LR was created for photographers specifically to eliminate all the PhSp graphics bells and whistles which smudgers don't need. And you have to save your stuff to Adobe's paltry cloud storage allocation [or pay for more]


View attachment 306460 View attachment 306463

As retired person, I will not rent LR. LR6 is the last version available to buy Amz or Ebay. Whatever they come up with from now on I will go without.

AS DBK has done, I offer up before and after, from the recent fiesta in Valencia of Our Lady of the Abandoned.

View attachment 306467 View attachment 306468

View attachment 306498

There's a quip in photography that the best camera is the one you've got with you. Exhibitions have been shown at the NYC Met Mus of photographs taken on an iPhone. Having been in photography all my life - apart from the other bits, in rock n roll and stuff - I get asked this question a lot. To get to the answer you have to start with what you want to achieve. It's a bit like cars. There really aren't any duff ones any more - just ones that suit you better than others. You wouldn't get a BMW Z3 to tow a two-up horse box.

Don't get sold on pixels. Pixels aren't what they used to be. Cameras in phones now have masses more pixels than pro DSLRs of recent years. Image quality comes directly from sensor size, exactly as in the days of film - remember 1/2 frame? The so-called FX 'full frame' sensor [because it is the dimensions of a 35mm film image, 36mm x 24mm] in my Nikon D600 makes 30Mb images. But I take loads of pix with my phone. The cameras in phones are astonishingly capable. Here's one of a chicken casserole coming on nicely on an induction hob in my self-build. The original image on my monitor is 4x the size of this one and still nicely sharp - but only 1.3Mb

If you are serious about taking close-ups of small objects, as per the flower pix above, a phone camera will do it. Here's a close-up of a small object taken with my phone. The individual grains of dust are clearly visible. The red capacitor is the sise of a TicTac. The image on my 27" monitor is 570mm x 290mm and nicely sharp - and the original has been quite heavily cropped.

But you do get more quality and capability with better technology in a 'proper'camera. DBK's Olympus takes interchangeable lenses. You can kit out with a range of lenses to suit your interests - a telephoto for nature/sport, a close up for nature/stamps/w.h.u. , a wide angle for landscape/architucture... That Olympus is a very compact camera for its technical abilities. Or a camera with all of this in one lump. There are loads of those.

Despite never having had a 35mm camera by anyone but Nikon, for me the go-to brand for a compact camera is Canon. The range of models is enormous. There's one to suit everybody. The thing I like about Canon compacts is the ergonomics. I have found that they are better laid out and the functions better thought out than other compact brands I've had. They all take fab photos. They all have close-up mode. They all do movies. The major difference is in how much control they offer you, over and above the 'auto' functions. That's something you must decide for yourself. Following on from that the thing to decide is what zoom range you want. If you want the best chance of getting a shot of wildlife, you need the longest telephoto reach, with whatever that comes with that at the wide angle end. For me, wide angle is the priority. As soon as a decent compact came out with 24mm [35mm equivalent] I outed my 28mm lens camera.

As for fettling photos, see my 'reply' to DBK above. View attachment 306493

I do have the Adobe subscription package and it has two flavours of Lightroom, the cloud version but also what they call also Lightroom Classic which is the one I use. This version does allow you to store stuff on your hard drive.

Photoshop was beyond me when I first looked at it but there are some excellent tutorials made by Adobe which helped me get started. I used it to make my book covers, maps and also for some fairly heavy duty editing - removing telephone poles and TV aerials etc. Lightroom has some features which compete now but Photoshop is very powerful. One feature I've used is to make the background more blurred. You can select the main object in focus, usually a flower with me, then increase the out of focus effect on the background. The main problem for me is if I don't use it regularly I forget how to do even the simplest things and have to re-learn everything.

 

[DBK]

Really enjoying reading about your travels. We have been to Corsica numerous times but not in recent years or in a motorhome. We traveled extensively around the whole island in a car, and your gorgeous photos are bringing back such memories! Re your comment about the walls not stopping a large vehicle, i think its not far from where you are now if you look over the cliffside you can see the "car graveyard" in the sea! The different colours shine through in the sunshine! Not as horrific as it sounds, they are mainly from 'locals' just getting rid of their old and rusty cars !!- not through accidents !! Enjoy your trip!

It was the broken gaps in the walls which worried me. We came here on a fly/drive holiday too and had a great time and this gave us the motivation to return.

 

[hilldweller]

As retired person, I will not rent LR. LR6 is the last version available to buy Amz or Ebay. Whatever they come up with from now on I will go without.

Quite right to. Pure greed rules today.

 

[SiJui]

We’ve only had our Motorhome for a year and Corsica is definitely on our list, but we need to wait til we have a bit more time! Enjoying our little trips though and learning the ropes!!

 

[Hilewaychile]

"removing telephone poles and TV aerials etc" ... I have had a dabble with PhShop but my brain went totally numb.

The fab thing about LR is that I recognised the tweaks on offer as all the things one used to do some other way. Colour temp was altered by a suitable array of gel filters. The grad filter was a piece of glass or the adjustable up/down Cokin one. 'Adjustment brush' was dodging and burning in the darkroom ... It's just a question of having a mind's eye vision of what the ideal image is and tweaking till you get there. I spend upwards of an hour on some photographs. The woman in blue has, amongst other things, had her 'ear muffs', ear rings, necklace, round hair-pin and pendent all tweaked individually.

And with judicious use of the spot remover one can remove quite complicated objects. You will note that in the photo of the 6 women I have removed the road-menders patch [bottom left].

And 'E' Battery, RHA are ready to march to the parade position without the signage in the b/g to distract attention. It was early LR days for me, this project, so the signage has not totally disappeared but only the Battery Sgt Maj would take issue with what's left.

As it is, he has spotted something else ... The swagger stick poking out is under his left arm. He has swung right to observe the oik in the right column fiddling with his hat. The man beind the hat-fiddler and the tall man behind the stick are both smirking because they have seen BSM clock this outrage and know he is going to roast the hat-fiddler over hot coals, come the end of the day. It will be painful.

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[Hilewaychile]

Having, looked again at you thread on my laptop as opposed to phone, I`m really impressed with the colour and clarity of your photos.
May I ask what camera your using and if you enhance them at all.
The focus on the close up`s is also spot on

One further thing to consider. If getting the shot off at precisely the right moment is important - any action, including wildlfe/people, flying/running about - as the price of the hardware reduces, the length of time it take the camera to get the shot off increases. My D600 is pretty much instantaneous.

'E' Battery are commemorating the first artillery round fired by the B.E.F. on Aug 22nd 1914, near Binche, Belgium. The camera has caught bits of wadding from the exploding blank flying through the air.

But my Canon IXUS 240 reacted so slowly that I ended up having to anticipate by quite some margin when Georgia would be in the right position as she rotated on the chair. Even then, it's not sharp.

 

[DBK]

We’ve only had our Motorhome for a year and Corsica is definitely on our list, but we need to wait til we have a bit more time! Enjoying our little trips though and learning the ropes!!

It probably makes sense to leave Corsica to later. Compared to most of mainland France you could be several hours from help if anything went wrong with the MH. It is the same with Spain, in the popular areas you will find motorhome dealers almost everywhere but I suspect here in Corsica they are only to be found in a few big towns with long stretches of wiggly roads between them.

 

[Langtoftlad]

I was thinking about upgrading my Lumix Bridge camera and/or my Lumix compact but the more I research, the more I come to the conclusion that for general travel photography my Samsung phone is probably more than adequate .
There are several articles online where professionals & serious amateurs suggest this over lugging a DSLR & lenses around.
Yes I know the limitations.

 

[DBK]

The weather was dry when we walked into Calvi this morning.

This is the Citadel I mentioned yesterday and about which my mind played a trick. Napoléon was not born here, he came from Ajaccio in the south of the island. No, the Citadel was where Christopher Columbus was born. I was mixing my historical figures up

Hang on I here you say, every other reference book says Columbus was born in Genoa. Don't tell the Calvi locals that because here they say he hid his origins because a Spanish regiment had once been slaughtered in Calvi and this wouldn't have gone down well with the Spanish when he was trying to get them to fund his expedition to the New World.

We set off to walk around the ramparts, which has a wide path and encouragingly was free. The English fired 30,000 cannon balls at the Citadel in 1794 and the fact it is still standings what little effect they had.

Seconds after taking this photograph the rain arrived! You can see the low cloud covering the mountains at the top of the picture.

We didn't linger but from what we saw the modern bit of Calvi, below the Citadel is a lively place. The coloured roofs you can see on the side of the marina are restaurants and bars. When we walked past them the staff were trying to get everything under cover from the rain.

I spent the afternoon contemplating frogs and cheese.

Cheese first. I took this shot in the Casino supermarket opposite the campsite.

Brebis cheeses but look at the prices! Given the size of them they must be approaching €100 per kilogram.

But Brebis cheese doesn't just come from Corsica. I bought this in an Intermarché on the mainland.

My French is rubbish so I have been slow to catch on. The French for sheep is mouton and in the UK we might refer to these as sheep's cheese but the French don't. The French for a ewe is brebis so these cheeses translate as ewes' cheese.

A water-filled channel runs past the site and such places are always worth investigating. Corsica has its own unique species of frog, the Corsican painted frog but it lives in the mountains. The frogs we have been listening to as they burble away to each other are Pond frogs, Pelophylax lessonae. I doubt we will find painted frogs on this trip but we might hear them if we overnight somewhere high enough. Like Mr Toad after seeing his first car they go not croak, croak croak but poop, poop poop.

 

[funflair]

Loving your write up @DBK a lot of years ago we cycles a bit of Corsica, we got the ferry from Nice to L'ille Rousse and then we went clockwise but missed out the pointy bit at the top, we then crossed over to Corte and camped in the pine forests of the gorges of the restonica, then over the Col de Vergio at 1470 metres I remember the freewheel down to Porto at sea level it was 28 miles all downhill and with some incredible drops off the side of the road, Gorges of the Spelunca I believe. I won't say anything about the headlines in the newspaper a couple of days later when a car with English tourists went over the edge.

I also remember we messed up the ferry times and had to make an early morning dash up to Calvi.

Enjoy your trip and keep the photo's coming

Martin

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[klaatu]

John, I think those are kilo prices on the brebis. Doesn't it say 'le kg' on the price tags?

I like a bit of brebis, I do. We were on a France Passion brebis farm last week in the Auvergne.

 

[DBK]

John, I think those are kilo prices on the brebis. Doesn't it say 'le kg' on the price tags?

I like a bit of brebis, I do. We were on a France Passion brebis farm last week in the Auvergne.

Yes, spot on, it does! I wondered at the time if maybe that was it but I couldn't see the 'le kg" in the top left of the LCD label. I must need new specs!

 

[Fenman]

One of our favourite cheeses in French supermarkets is a hard cheese called Tomme de Montagne and it's made with a mix of goat, sheep and cow milk. Delish. Sometimes tricky to find and most often in the cheese counter not the pre-packed shelves.

 

[DBK]

One further thing to consider. If getting the shot off at precisely the right moment is important - any action, including wildlfe/people, flying/running about - as the price of the hardware reduces, the length of time it take the camera to get the shot off increases. My D600 is pretty much instantaneous.

'E' Battery are commemorating the first artillery round fired by the B.E.F. on Aug 22nd 1914, near Binche, Belgium. The camera has caught bits of wadding from the exploding blank flying through the air.

But my Canon IXUS 240 reacted so slowly that I ended up having to anticipate by quite some margin when Georgia would be in the right position as she rotated on the chair. Even then, it's not sharp.

View attachment 306563 View attachment 306564

In this picture of the Citadel there were several yellow buoys on the water which were distracting, so I removed them but that left a few which were more tricky, such as the one nearest the camera, which is on a breaking wave. Then I spotted there was a similar wave off to right - so I just copied over a bit of that.

I'm using Lightroom mobile on a tablet which isn't very subtle. I have to use a finger not a mouse and cursor. This is why the iPad version is better - you can use a stylus and with the right iPad it can be touch sensitive.

Before:

After: (all yellow buoys removed - almost. )

 

[DBK]

We have stopped tonight on what is probably the most expensive car park in Corsica but more of that later.

We drove south west from Calvi on the D81B which looks very narrow on this map but I had checked with Google Maps and this showed it having a white line down the middle.

These are a couple of general shots, first looking back towards Calvi, which is hiding behind the headland. The road we are on is just visible in the top right running horizontally.

And looking down the coast and where we were heading.

Blame Vodafone's data allowance for this, another dashcam clip, taken at about the same place as the photos above. Nothing really spectacular but it may give an impression of the scenery.



My guess is each lane either side of thel line down the middle of the road is about 2m and as we are 2.05m wide, wing mirror to wing mirror we were fairly comfortable meeting other vehicles. Until we met a coach built MH coming the other way which was being followed by several cars and a PVC. I'd just squeezed past a truck and collected a couple of cars myself. The place where we had got past the truck was only 20m or so behind me, but would the cars behind back up? I'm coming to the conclusion, based on other incidents like this, the use of reverse gear is not taught by French driving instructors. The French driver of the coach built dismounted and showed his fellow countryman how to go backwards and it was all sorted eventually. If I get really bored I'll post a video but it won't be very interesting as all the action took place behind me.

The Garmin satnav chose an inland route which would have taken us half an hour. My choice of route and decidedly not Garmin approved took us just over two hours and brought us here.

The aire, or more precisely car park, is in the very centre of the picture.
Closer up it looks like this, the terraced bit.

€20 a night to stay here. Zippo facilities but the alternative would have been a campsite which would probably have been more.

This is CamperContact #22835 at Galéria and it really is just a car park but the location makes the cost worthwhile.

If you look on the map above Galéria is in the bottom left and next to it an entry for "tour" and here is the tour - or tower or what's left of it.

I asked the lady walking the dog to move out of the shot but she just stuck her tongue out at me - but too quick for me to record it.

From the other side of the tower you can see the beach to the north of us and the outflow of the Marsolino and Fango rivers. They join just inland and I'm not sure what the bit which flows into the sea is called.

We walked into Galéria this afternoon. Most of it is modern and every other building is a B&B or restaurant. By the little marina the piles of seagrass were very deep.

Northern Corsica has historic links to Italy and in the monument to the fallen we found you can get a glimpse of this.

And in fuzzy close up.

Italian surname but French Christian names. *

The same Italian names were visible in the cemetery, all "surface mounted" mausoleums in country where digging into the rock to bury your dead is difficult.

Cows are everywhere around us including in the village where one was sizing up the flowers on sale outside the mini-supermarket.

This spot is renowned for its sunsets. More to follow perhaps?

* Attribution to this observation is down to the previously mentioned/depicted dog walker.

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