I am on my way to Corte in Corsica. With the train from Antwerp to Brussels, with the Thalys To Paris and then from Orly to Corte. Everything goes smoothly, in Orly I meet Michel and Brigitte who are on the same flight and in Corte Dominique is waiting for us with the other participants, Christine, Margaret and Marie Lo and Marie Jo. Corte is a nice touristic city with a citadel. We spend the first night in a hotel but we have diner together at the Equestrian Centre.
Next day, people from the Center pick us up at the hotel, we get our, horses saddles, tack and saddlebags and around 10:45 we start our trek under a blue sky and sunshine in a south easterly direction. The trail takes us along the stream Tavignano, over the hills and through woods and maquis and eventually at a ford also through the fast-flowing river . We picnic on the banks of the Tavignano and that is quite a classy affair . The back up vehicle comes up with a table, 2 benches, 3 cool boxes with beer, wine and soft drinks, corsican ham and ssausage salad, chicken, bread, cheese and dessert. Ok so it is not exactly what I have in mind when I think of a picnic but as long as it is there you can just as well enjoy it. There is even time for a siesta before we start again. Our destination for today is a camping with a gite. We arrive in the afternoon and have plenty of time to enjoy a nice corsican beer on the terrace.
Today it is going to be a long day and we have to leave early. We are ready to go around 08:00. We cross the Tavignano at a ford and go uphill immediately through very dense maquis. We then follow a narrow trail, hardly a trail even, overgrown, very steep and littered with rocks. During one of the short but nasty descents, my horse slips, falls and throws me on my back in the maquis. Fortunately the damage limits itself to a few scratches for me and none for my horse. We climb further until we reach the plateau at 1400m . The maquis is less dense here and we can enjoy the magnificent view over the surrounding mountain chains and valleys under an equally magnificent sky.
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A wide dirt road leads us through a large wood to our picnic place. Our back up truck has not yet arrived, but the view over the valley with the village of Vezzani makes up for that. Ghisoni is the village where we will be spending the night and to get there we have to descent again to an altitude of 750m, and that is easier said than done. Some years ago the forrest was burned and with it all the tracks and so the descent is a bit of an improvisation . It is steep and slippery from the pine-needles and difficult because of the multitude of fallen trees that block the way. It takes us more than one hour to reach a more of less passable road. When we are finally not far from Ghisoni something strange happens to me. The world turns very bright like on an overexposed picture and eventually all white and the next moment I come back to myself sitting next to my horse with a hole in my head bleeding like a pig. I had a blackout. The blood is stemmed and with a temporary bandage I continue the way to the gite in Ghisoni.
We bring the horses to the local football field for the night and then call on the local fire brigade for help who arrives with an extensive First Aid Kit to take care of the hole in my head. Michel is doctor and I am in good hands.
We have diner and spend the night in the gite where we are the only guests.
Next day we leave around 10am. There was a lot of wind during the night but I slept quite well. The wound looks good and it does not trouble me too much. In no time we are back in the maquis on half forgotten half overgrown forest trails getting steeper and steeper. Fallen trees block the way and have to be removed with might and main and a lot of difficulty. We are following the course of a mountain torrent until we find a ford to cross it.
The Col de Verde (1200m) is the place where we find our back up vehicle with the picnic and we have a short siesta afterwards.
We are now following a wide and winding dirt road that gives us a panoramic view over the high mountains. A long gallop breaks the monotony and raises the spirits. From afar we see a village and everybody thinks that is the destination for today. That is a miscalculation, our final destination is the village of Zicavo another full 60minutes further along the D69. But it is worth it. There is a good shower waiting for us, and an extremely friendly elderly lady serves us a good pint of Pietra (the corsican beer) and a good meal. All is well that ends well.
We are leaving next day at 9am direction Plateau de Coscione at 1500m and that begins invariably with a steep and narrow forest trail strewn with boulders. Once we come out of the maquis at the top we have another beautiful panorama waiting for us. And then we are on the Plateau itself. It is a very special landscape . Wild and desolate with gnarled tree stumps, leftovers of lighting strokes, big boulders and many watercourses making it quite swampy. It is still sunny but up here is a cold wind blowing and when we get to the picnic place where our back up is waiting everybody has put on his warmest clothes. Not too far from our picnic a group of swine are feasting on the carrion of a cow laying in one of the watercourses. Fortunately we only noticed after we finished our meal.
We do not linger over the picnic because it is not warm and continue quickly towards our destination for today a gite annex stables where the colorful person of Pierrot is lord and master. Pierrot is a sympathetic 72-year old who had this establishment build a few years ago and keeps and breeds horses for his pleasure and hogs for the meat.
Not surprisingly the meal is mostly with home grown products in quantities large enough to feed an army. The portions are big but very tasty and the whole lot is served with a local corsican wine and I finally retire wholly satisfied.
During the night the weather has turned. Until now we had sun every day, but it seems that those days are over. It has been raining whole night, and although it stopped now, the sky is with heavy clouds and where we were yesterday on the plateau de Coscione we can see the snow. Our today's destination is nearby. The village of Quenza is only some 1:1/2 away. We arrive around 13:00 and we can picnic on the terrace of the gite where we will spend the night. The sun has broken through the clouds and we can enjoy the view over the Aiguilles de Bavella. In the afternoon we go to the village and we are back in time for the aperitif in the gite .
Next morning things really look very bad . It is raining cats and dogs and there is snowfall at 1100m. That is very bad news because our route goes over grounds at 1200m. On top of that tonight is the night we are supposed to bivouac. What we have seen the previous days is that the trails we are taking are difficult to negotiate in the best of circumstances, covered with snow that could be really dangerous on horse back.
In addition, Margaret has a big problem. She seems to have a serious infection on her teeth.
She needs professional help urgently and that is only available in the hospital in Bastia. For her the trek is finished no matter what. And so the decision is taken to end our ride prematurely. It takes a lot of phoning to organize 2 large vans to take 7 of the 9 horses back to Corte. The remaining 2 will be collected later.
Late afternoon we arrive in Corte with the horses. The rain did not stop for one minute and it is clear that we took the right decision be it with great heartache. Besides the return trip was not entirely flawless. First it was the car that pulled a van with 4 horses that broke down on the road. Fortunately, what seemed at first like an impossible situation, was only a minor thing and could be repaired quickly. Then there was an incident with the driver of a school buss who blocked the passage in a curve and demanded that the car with the van should back off. Fortunately (again) our guide, Michel was able to arrange things with a bit of corsican diplomacy (fight here and now ?. The bus backed off a bit and everybody was able to continue.
We are one day sooner than expected in Corte, and although it has stopped raining, nobody feels like saddling up and doing a little trip in the nneighborhood We make an extra visit to Corte and in the afternoon leave for Bastia. Unforseen, but there you go. Dominique makes arrangements for an hotel, Margaret has discharged herself from hospital and we have our good bye diner together, for tomorrow everybody is leaving at a different hour.
End of a trip with a beautiful destination, that started very promising but ended in minor key. Next time better.
information at cavalrando and at pyrenees-a-cheval
