To St Florent and the Agriates desert (23rd May)

After our ascent of Mt Occi to visit the deserted village, we set off again for our next planned stop-over en route to Cap Corse; St Florent, using our Campercontact app to find a couple of likely camp sites near-by.

We could see on the map that we could go across le dèsert Agriates, an area described as once being the breadbasket of northern Corsica but now reduced to a barren, treeless and denuded landscape (according to our 10 year old Rough Guide). Always up for a driving challenge, we made sure we had plenty of fresh water, that the van’s vitals were in good order, and we had enough daylight to do the drive safely.

The coastal road to get to the desert was the by now customary Corsican caper, with lots of bends, narrow roads (especially on blind corners) and stunning views across the many bays and coves that dot the coastline, with what we took to be the start of the desert and barren hillsides away in the distance.

As we turned off the ‘main’ road to the white, wiggly, switch-back route across the desert, we were beginning to wonder whether we’d taken a wrong turn, as one green valley followed by green hill-side, was replaced with another…

And so, with our emergency water rations untouched and our kepis stowed for another day, we found ourselves on the edge of St Florent having barely broken a sweat. Clearly much has improved for the Agriates desert since our Rough Guide was penned!

Camping Kallisté was the first of the sites from our app to greet us and, if the app was to be believed, offered an ACSI discount even though we couldn’t find it on our ACSI app or in the ACSI booklet. And sure enough, it did, and so we were soon tucked away on a very pleasant pitch and able to get our mat out to dry off after its drenching in Calvi! The site was set back from the beach west of St Florent and separated from it by a large meadow, full of flowers and the buzzing of insects.

With time on our side, we decided to have a stroll into St Florent, a 15 minute walk along the beach according to reception, but with what looked like a harbour entrance on our Google map to swim across, so we took a 30 minute walk along the road instead. And as we arrived into the outskirts of the town, we noticed a footbridge across to the beach that Google had yet to find…

The town itself is a pleasant mix of bars, cafés, restaurants and boat hire firms, not yet busy enough to become the touristic maelstrom it would no doubt be in high season. For now though, it allowed us a relaxed stroll past one menu board after another, with hastily adjusted prices being stuck up on paper across the blackboards as restaurants jockeyed with each other to tempt the passing trade!

A stroll along the harbour arm past the small working fishing boat section and with views back to the Genoese tower (renovated after being reduced to rubble by Nelson in 1794), allowed us to look back to the beach that our campsite was on and we determined to check out the bridge and use it on our way back – a much prettier and direct route for sure!

The beach was interesting in that it was no more than a spur of sand that had been thrown up over the years, allowing it to form a bar across what would have once been a wider estuary, and on this occasion (as with many of the other Corsican beaches on this trip) covered in banks of drying Posidonia Oceanica weed (or sea grass) – and lest we were minded to have a bit of a moan ‘a les rosbifs’, the local authorities had helpfully erected a large sign pointing out all the eco benefits of Posidonia to the fish stocks of the region (indeed the Italians call its fruit the ‘olive of the sea’). Notwithstanding its eco credentials, and that it is in decline in the Mediterranean, it has certainly taken the gloss off some of the Corsican beaches we have seen when compared to the pictures without the weed/seagrass!

And although we had braced ourselves for a potentially noisy night having seen a number of ‘disco bars’ along the harbour, we were clearly early enough in the season to have escaped them and awoke after a peaceful night to a sunny day and our next road trip adventure – Cap Corse along the Napoleonic corniche road…

S&J