Hiking in Corsica — Part 5
We were not far from the end. Just another two days. We decided today we would double the stages again and get as close to the finish line as possible.
Back on the dirt road leaving the Refuge de Matalza, we followed a slow incline over 10 kilometres, ascending some 500 metres to reach Monte Alcudin (2134 metres). The south was still offering some height and it was back to the school of head-down and get it done. From Monte Alcudin we endeavoured the bittiest bit of descent yet, a real ankle-breaker with no real demarcation of a route. We freestyled, slipped and slid, threw our poles down to free up hands to clamber cautiously down, all the while the refuge d’Asinau sat below, frustratingly visible. I bought a tin of paté from the guardien and ate it with some stale bread. Meat of indeterminate provenance encased in metal has always been a nauseating fear of mine and will never not cause me to wretch. However, I was hungry and took it down, washing it down with a coca cola. Generally you can rely on food standards in France being such that the meat isn’t the discarded scraps swept up off a factory floor, churned and squashed into a preservative tin. I would never eat a tin of meat in the UK though. Domestic frustrations work their way into our food factory lines and lead into tinned unpleasantness.
God but we weren’t far off now. Two stages remained, one to finish today, leaving only six hours tomorrow.
That afternoon was one of the most brutal of the trip. We toiled in 30+ Celsius heat, passing by ravines, working our way in the shadows of the Aiguilles de Bavella (‘Bavella Needles’). I had taken off my top for the first time preferring the chafing straps than bear the nylon heat of my t-shirt a minute longer. These ‘Aiguilles’ peaks were different to peaks we’d seen before, they were craggy needles rising out of pine woods, curved and cylindrical. We would hug them as we crept around their edges. The route rose higher again and we cursed the guidebook for implying this would be an easy stage. Four hours after leaving Refuge d’Asinau, we started up the final Bavella hill and hit a main road where car loads of people were passing. Bavella has a statue of Jesus. Corsicans, generally older ones, seem to come, park up and place little gifts or candles at his feet before taking lunch in a nearby café or looking at the impressive Bavella needle mountains. Stéfane and I walked through the village, picked up a coke and pushed onto Paliri, another two hours away, a frustrating short section which always lasts longer than you think, up and down, up and down, and finally down on an old mule track, which actually had paved stones at parts. I remember feeling at this point that we had made a mistake leaving Bavella and pushing two hours farther onto the next refuge, that it was one 12 hour day too much for us. I remember the pain in every joint and sending blistering barnacles of swear words into the sky as we turned to face either another steep drop or another steep climb. Stéfane braved it all as he did, stoically, silently, steadfastly. Had Jérome stubbornly continued past Bavella, it was a doubt that he would reach the Refuge de Paliri before nightfall. A short ascent later, we did finally reach the Refuge de Paliri. The cash we brought had nearly gone and we pulled together everything we had for two beers and a predictable dinner of veal pasta. Paliri is perched on a cliff edge and looks out toward the Bavella needle peaks, behind which the sun was beginning to set. Gathered was a curious mix of fresh-faced hikers beginning the south to north and rather more bruised north-to-south hikers nearing their finish.
Go get the guitar, someone clearly whispered, because on cue, a handsome Gitan begun to strum and sing Corsican ballads. I sat with two Czech couples in their fifties who I couldn’t believe were doing the GR20. They were keen walkers I understood and ever since the fall of the Berlin wall and the subsequent retreat of soviet-era communism, had exploded out of their country in excitement, devouring the world for all its hitherto unseen sights. Beautifully, one of the husbands spoke about the joy of travel and the claustrophobia of Prague before 1989. As the gitan plucked pained melodies on love and grief, I saw a young 21 year old girl overwhelmed by the beauty of the scene and begin to weep as she watched the sunset. Oh I felt certain she had found what she was looking for: beauty and peace. Oh I was sure she had found an inner calm after one day on the trail. But by jove she would face rack and ruin over the next 2 weeks and the windier, frillier aspects of self-discovery and sunsets would be left to die in the Corsican interior, replaced by primitive notions of getting from A to B and not defecating for 4 days. But isn’t it beautiful how people react in their own way? Yes, okay, fine.
With a thud, Jérome finally arrived and shifted the Czechs along the bench to make room. He planted a pack of ciggies down and a bottle of wine. He’d come to settle his debts in style. He’d been going for 13 hours and looked positively broken. The night went on and I asked the Czech couple to continue recalling their life behind the iron curtain. I learned their only trip outside the soviet bloc had been to Iraq during the 80s to help build a tunnel underneath the main airport in Iraq for one Sadaam Hussain. Fascinating lives. They, like me, were depressed with their own domestic politics and we spent a good few hours chatting away before I bade them farewell and went to make my tent next to Stéfane. Jérome asked if I wanted to accompany him to the makeshift shower. I’m not sure why, I think he just liked having company in whatever he did. I thanked him and said all things considered I was fine as I was.
Like two aged mules the next morning we begun the final descent to Conca, the village which marks the end of the GR20. Passing the prominent peak Punta de l’Anima Damnata (‘Point of the Damned Soul’), we dropped through pine, arbutus and heather, letting gravity do its best to pull our legs forward one after tuther. A gritty channel took us below 1000 metres, above which we would never have to climb again. Down stony tracks, past pools of water where groups of teenagers bathed and, I hoped, fondled each other under the surface. I would be glad to no longer see scurrying lizards, I would be glad to no longer lose my footing over loose scree. Jérome had again faded into the distance behind us; Stéfane and my trusty partnership had lasted. Six hours later our feet hit the tarmac of the road into Conca.
A slight turn for the worse happened as we turned a bend to see a bull terrier lying in a divot on the side of the road, waiting for a dog walker to pass. As he did so, the terrier pounced on the dog seizing the helpless thing in its jaws and shaking it. We sprung into action and pulled the mauling terrier off the dog by its collar. The terrier nonchalantly continued down the road until a car pulled up and the owner chastised the dog for running away and lumped it into the boot. I would register the dog attack with the local commissariat de police later that day.
190 kilometres hiked, 12500 metres climbed and 11 days later, it all came to an end at Bar Le Soleil Levant where we stopped and took photographs next to the finish line and sat underneath the parasols. Well done Stéfane, well done Caspar. Indomitable Jérome pulled up later and took a seat. There was a leather bound book to be signed at the bar by hikers, which we did and I left an old rustic poem with a few filthy lines in it for the amusement of anyone who is inclined towards baseness. Pats on the back, large exhales. A veritable achievement washed down with Pietras and not ruined, but improved by the presence of a Russian woman who arrived from a different direction to the GR20, immaculately presented in stainless hiking apparel, and took a few pictures of herself by the finish line and then promptly left. One cheeky hiker asked if she had done the hike and she insisted she had.
Stéfane and I said goodbye to each other at the end, though we would meet for dinner a couple times that week. I retired to a hotel in Porto Vecchio and spent the next four days following a fixed routine of waking and taking espressos at a café in the port in some vain attempt to generate a John Le Carré plot. I sat, waited and watched streams of passing people, open to intrigue, open to anything that might come my way. Nothing seemed to. Really the four days in Porto Vecchio passed without great event. I swum, read and ate most of the produce left on the island, returning to London much the same weight as I had left. What a waste.
