10. So where exactly is Corsica?
So "Where are you going on Holiday?" everyone asked. "Corsica
![Smile :) :)](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7)
" we replied.
- " is that near Majorica?'
- "oh Greece!"
- "How hot is it in Turkey in July?"
- isn't that an island?" -
Halleluja !
I was amazed how few people knew where Corsica is and that it is French. I could perhaps forgive people assuming it is Italian - it probably should be from a geographical perspective - but how could you not know it's an Island. I mean didn't everybody watch Le Grand Depart in the 100th edition of the Tour de France in 2013?
So why Corsica? Inspiration from this forum of course. We wanted to do a long-ish trip somewhere hot-ish - and I'm a sucker for ferries and Islands. I mean its not a proper holiday if you don't cross water is it? So Corsica it was.
After our manic 80 hour dash to Salzburg and back last year we were determined that the journey should be more leisurely. So we booked a Dover - Calais ferry early afternoon on Thursday and an overnight ferry from Nice to Bastia on Saturday night. I usually spend weeks poring over maps and planning routes but work has been a bit manic recently so 24 hours before we set-off I had no idea what route we would take or where we would stopover. I'm not sure exactly when we did decide our stopovers - it could have been on the ferry! But we opted for Orleans and Avignon. Two historical French cities that we had heard of but never been to.
Our route was roughly as follows:
So (adding on 3 hours from home to Dover) that's 17 hours driving in 3 days - should be a doddle ................
Well - the Calais ferry was late, and you've heard about Paris, and you've heard about our experiences with AutoRoute tolls - which resulted in me stubbornly avoiding Autoroutes for most of Friday! So a week later.........
Actually it wasn't so bad, although we did reach our overnight stops in both Orleans and Avignon after 10pm each night and only had time for a quick supermarket shop in Nice before catching the overnight ferry to Corsica. Driving times were roughly:
Home to Dover - 3 hours
Calais to Orleans - 5 hours (inc Paris)
Orleans to Avignon - 9 hours ( to save about 20 Euros - duh)
Avignon to Nice - 3 hours
We spent a good morning in each of Orleans and Avignon and these times included fuel and brew-up stops.
It was a long way - but only the leg to Avignon was really hard work and that would have been much easier if we'd just have stuck to the autoroutes. But we visited two fascinating new French cities on the way.
We also wasted a bit of time looking for overnight stops but found two good ones in the end. We used the Camperstops book for the first time. More about that in a future post.