Campervan Therapy

St. Florent’s Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta

We love the blue bay and  rugged headland from St. Florent’s 15th Century Citadel, built by the Genoese and bombarded by Nelson.

The Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta is a kilometre walk east. A simple, limestone building, it’s surrounded by meadows on the site of Roman Nebbium. Even better, we’re the only visitors.

Serpents and wild animals guard the entrance on either side of the door. Inside it’s grace and light except for the mummified St. Flor, a Roman soldier and martyr, who grins at me, all gory teeth and gilded garments.

The black Christ is carried through the town to protect it from drought and I hope the poor parishioners won’t have to do that too often in the years to come.

The Parc de Saleccia

We drive towards L’Île Rousse, with yet more craggy peaks, maquis and blue sea. The Parc de Saleccia is beautiful. We start in the aromatic garden surrounding a dance floor. Imagine, music, floating dresses and the fragrance of the Mediterranean…

There’s olive groves and the wild oleaster trees, pistachio shrubs, oleanders and water lily ponds, a bird hide, and so many drought tolerant plants that, sadly, we may need to plant in our Sussex garden. Even better we get to watch the bees at work.

We learn lots of things, my favourite stories being how a Roman legion landed in Saleccia , flavoured their stew with oleander leaves, thinking them laurel, and poisoned themselves. Also, how historically the interior’s sheep rearing land was seen as the best, so was left to the boys while the girls got the impoverished coastal lands, prey to pirate raids and mosquitoes –  thanks to tourism the coast is now where the treasure lies.

Calvi

We head out of Calvi as although it has three citadels, and an old town looking over the sea, it is sardine-style packed. The beauty of motor-homing is that we can just alter our plans in a second – so we head south to west coast Galéria.

Galéria

The handsome stone village is hemmed in by craggy peaks, cows wander all over the beach, the village, around the church. The small harbour and limestone cove is all blue sea and golden sand.

But Camping Ideal is anything but ideal – the shower block a relic from the 70s and probably not maintained since then either.  A tiger mosquito lands on my arm and that’s when we decamp early to the van. Then thunder crashes round the mountain tops, eucalyptus trees wave in a frenzy, lightning rips through the sky, the shadows of caravans closed up for the winter are ghostly. Suddenly peaceful Galéria is transformed into a strange and alien place.

But the next morning, Galéria, washed to a sparkle by the storm, redeems itself, bougainvillea nodding over balconies. We’re on the route of artisans and the artisan bakery is perhaps the best I’ve ever come across, its chestnut bread delicious.

Corsican music plays on the vine covered terrace of the village bar. And those cows are really free range, helping themselves to the maquis and garden hedges – homely disorder restored.