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Villages, Boats, Boulevards, Bars, Break in France and Italy, Aegean Tour July 4, 2008

Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Aquarium, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Destination, Dolphinarium, Europe, France, Hotels, Museum, Oceanarium, Paris, Planetarium, Restaurant, USA , trackback

Napeoleon greeted us when we arrived in the palm-fringed port of Ajaccio and disembarked onto the jetty. Corsica’s capital exhibits boulevards, bars and boats in honour of its most famous son. The white-glossed vessels glide out slowly with their cargoes of rich French and Italian mariners, perhaps south to Sardinia or Sicily before venturing upon Poseidon’s homeland in the depths of the Aegean.

We wound up into the mountains for three hours at the back of a stifling minibus, rucksacks on knees, to arrive at Petreto-Bicchisano to au-pair and keep shop for two months. The villages of bleached stone are perched on crags, almost indistinguishable in the dense green forests. Grey stones on distant, wispy mountaintops become crosses and tombstones as one ascends. Every village has its protective saint and little dark chapel. Children play in the street with its one-thousand-foot drop to the bronze river below. The old women in black do not shout warnings. It seems that one is born to Corsica with an instinct of its precariousness.

Travel GuidebookThe Bungelmi family are politicians, part of the recently-formed Corsican Assembly, which gave devolution to this tiny French départe-ment. They are like God to the villagers; we, as their servants and the only “anglaises” (actually “écossaises” and therefore even more rarified) to have visited this mountain ledge are held in high esteem. Once it is

Established that our guttural French accents are not of German origin they are our friends. Old wars die hard.

The Wild Man of the Woods stops us as we climb the steep mountains, pushing Denis in his baby buggy (imported from le Continent or mainland France) to see his cousins in the next village five hundred feet due north.

“You are the English girls,” he says. “What is it like now?”

When asked if he has visited our country, he smiles sadly and says in English with a touch of Geordie, “I was in the British Navy in the Second World War. It was too much. I deserted ship at Marseilles and came here to hide. This is the first time I’ve spoken English in forty years.”

He continues down the mountain to his wooden shack and his bees.

Our Corsican charges are bandits born to shriek and howl all day in the white heat. Their parents are on the point of divorce. The primordial sense of God so strong in these ancient villages has no pull on the young Corsicans who escape to the sophistication of Paris to marry in register offices. After all, why worry about Heaven when Paradise has been experienced first hand on this Ile de Beauté? We are caught in the middle of theatrical scenes beginning with Roland’s selfishness in bed and ending with Marie-Laure throwing a runny round of ewe’s cheese against the wall. Drama being the simplest form of communication, we quickly pick up the Corsican dialect! The atmosphere explodes every hot evening and echoes round the valley so we run away in the middle of the night. There are no street lights so we walk in the middle of the road to avoid hidden scorpions on the grassy banks. In the distance the the mountains glow like coal embers to light our way. The forest fires have begun — shall we escape before they reach our ridge?

Having hitched to the capital we make camp on the beach in the early morning. We have another job by lunchtime — waitresses in a nightclub. This solves the accommodation problem. We can work by night and sleep by day on the beach, leaving Mathieu, the old man who sleeps in his beach café, to guard our rucksacks. Our pretty floral sundresses and espadrilles look out of place in the red-lit club beside the glittering harbour where the waitresses wear black rubber and gold chains. There is only male clientele. As foreign blonds we are greatly in demand — we stay behind the bar nervously washing the same glasses whilst the black rubber girls mingle, dance and suction on to the customers, giggling at our behaviour. Madame Catya pokes us crossly and tells us to circulate but the conversation is disjointed:

“The mountains, the sun and the beaches are so beautiful here,” I attempt to a hotel tycoon.

“Your tits are like great big melons,” he replies, smiling.

I wonder if I have misunderstood, but when his counterpart signs a cheque for £150 for a glass of Perrier and Caroline, I know it’s time to make another escape, the second in twenty-four hours.

My twentieth birthday present from Caroline is a secondhand military blanket on which to sleep on the beach. On our first night under the stars we awake to blinding torches and Inspector Clouseau, who moves us on. We sit in the eerie square at 3am with Napoleon looking down menacingly for half an hour and then return to the beach to sleep until morning.

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