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Cap Corse with beach and turquoise water
Cap Corse is a spiny peninsula pointing north from the body of Corsica. Photograph: Getty Images
Cap Corse is a spiny peninsula pointing north from the body of Corsica. Photograph: Getty Images

Corsica’s cape of good campsites

This article is more than 4 years old

With cliffs and crags, views and sandy beaches, Cap Corse, which juts out from the top of the island, offers a perfect mobile home stay

‘It’s like being in a car advert!” The corniche road along the western side of Cap Corse, the spiny promontory pointing north from the body of Corsica towards Genoa, must be one of Europe’s most dramatic drives. Cliff-hugging hairpin bends hurtle around rocky outcrops and across densely forested hillsides, with the sea seeming both unnervingly close and dizzyingly far below. The kids leaned with glee one way and I leaned the other; taxis casually overtook us; at one point a wild boar (or possibly tame pig) wandered into view round a bend, and at another metal struts and wooden planks carried the road over a landslide.

Cap Corse

At just 40km long and 15km across, Cap Corse is like a miniature version of the island itself, with sandy beaches and impressive peaks in close, if terrifying, proximity. Until the corniche road was built in the 19th century, it was effectively cut off from the rest of Corsica; the entire peninsula is still carpeted in maquis, the fragrant, dense scrub that, over the centuries, has been a hiding place for rebels as Corsica endured waves of invasion and control, from Greeks and Romans, Pisans and Genoese and, eventually, the French (even the British at the end of the 18th century).

Today, it remains appealingly wild and remote: look back along the coast and apart from the odd village clinging to the hills on the jagged western side, or tiny harbours nestled into the more rolling east, it could be the island from Jurassic World. Passenger ferries stream into Bastia – the port city at its eastern base that was Corsica’s capital until Napoleon moved it to his home town of Ajaccio – but the tourists seem to vanish into the maquis.

We visited in early June with our daughters, aged 14 and 12, ahead of the high-summer crowds and punishing heat. Corsica is famous for one of Europe’s toughest treks, the GR 20, a two-week clamber along its mountainous spine, but we had less challenging coastal trails in our sights. It was a good temperature for hiking and a particularly beautiful time for the maquis. More than 2,500 species of wildflowers grow in Corsica, and the landscape teemed with dog roses, orchids, broom and wild herbs – I’d never smelt curry plant on a beach before.

Here come the girls … Justine’s daughters in Cap Corse. Photograph: Justine Jordan

The kids, who are more used to the murky North Sea, were most excited about the swimming. Corsican waters are a perfect turquoise, but we often had to clamber over mounds of posidonia, a seagrass that accumulates on beaches and scatters the sand with tufty ginger balls that look like camel poo. One resort was plastered with signs assuring tourists that the seaweed “IS NOT RUBBISH”; in fact, it indicates that the water is unpolluted. We decided to learn to love it, but for fussy tweens jumpy about jellyfish or anything brushing their ankles, the holy grail remained a pristine shoreline.

Working our way around the cape, we stopped first on the eastern side at the pleasingly small-scale Aria Marina campsite, on the coast road a few miles south of Macinaggio. There’s a flat field for tents, and mobile homes are ranged up a hill towards the start line of the maquis, with stunning views. We ate on the covered porch of our mobile home, watching boats cross the bay.

Mobile homes at Camping Saint-Florent

We had chosen this easy option as combining the good bits of camping (scenic locations, outdoor living, wallet-friendly accommodation off-season) with the good bits of not camping (literally everything else). The caravans may look from the outside like white lego bricks, but inside there’s not a millimetre of space wasted, with up to three bedrooms, kitchen, shower and toilet, and enough room to hang out inside if it rains.

There are a dozen or so campsites along the east coast of the cape, and at the base of the west, but none is overwhelming in size or impact on the landscape. From Macinaggio, a coastal path snakes around the tip of Cap Corse through a wild landscape of sand, scrub and cliffs that is gloriously untouched by roads. The trail was originally cut by Genoese customs officers hundreds of years ago, and the whole route, to Centuri Port on the eastern side of the cape, takes seven to eight hours. The kids blanched at the idea of an eight-hour walk, so we decided to catch a boat to Barcaggio, a village at the halfway point, and after a fortifying lunch take our time wandering back, with plenty of stops for swimming and siestas.

Anyone who’s been on a family holiday can guess what happened next. We arrived in Macinaggio to discover there was no space left on the outward voyage. Our best bet was to snap up the last four seats for the only journey back from Barcaggio, thus turning a leisurely stroll into a forced march against the clock on one packet of biscuits, toting bags of snorkelling gear we had no time to use. We jogged past ruined Genoese watchtowers and deserted beaches dotted with cows lounging on piles of seagrass, arriving just in time for the 40-minute boat journey back (€17pp), swimming costumes still dry.

The coast path near Macinaggio. Photograph: Getty Images

We had more luck – or better planning – with boat rides when we stayed in the larger Kalliste camping village, one of several backing on to the beach along the wide bay next to the port of Saint-Florent, at the western base of the Cape. Here, as elsewhere, we met few Brits – most holidaymakers seemed to have come from mainland France (or, as Corsicans call it, le continent). Though resorts and restaurants were lively, all the sites we stayed at were fairly quiet, as were the coast paths – bar the odd group of committed walkers more interested in striding to the next headland than in stopping for dips.

The cape’s best beaches are further to the west in the Agriates desert, a savagely beautiful wilderness with a path tracing the coastline. We loaded up on water and local delicacies for lunch: caramelised onion and chard turnovers, cheesy breads, beignets (criminally good savoury doughnuts made with sheep’s cheese and chestnut flour). Then we took a 20-minute boat ride from Saint-Florent to Plage du Lotu (€10pp), one of Corsica’s most famous beaches, where there is nothing but sand, surf, seagrass and the odd cow. It should have taken three hours to walk back, but each perfect little cove we passed felt like a swim too good to pass up, and it was late evening before we made it back to the campsite. As we walked, we gave thanks for the seagrass clogging up the river mouths flowing out to sea – without it to bounce across, we’d have had to take off our shoes and wade.

The bronze age U Nativu statue near Patrimonio. Photograph: Justine Jordan

There’s more to Cap Corse than coastline. Driving into the interior quickly takes you up into a vertiginous granite landscape, with extraordinary views in all directions. Corsica’s most famous neolithic site is in the south at Filitosa, but we made for the hamlet of Piève, where we picnicked beside its three statue-menhirs, an enigmatic stone family staring out over the hills to sea. (We’d previously detoured to see an even more impressive piece of prehistory in Patrimonio, near Saint-Florent: the two-metre tall U Nativu, which was ploughed up by a local farmer in the 1960s and now glares out at the village from under thundering eyebrows.) Nearby Murato is unmissable for its 12th-century Pisan church, an incongruous vision in chequered green and white marble, perched on top of the world.

It was at our final campsite that we found the easiest, most inviting swimming – right on our doorstep. Although it’s just outside Bastia and only 20 minutes’ drive from the airport, the San Damiano campsite is on a sandy spit between the sea and a vast lagoon, a haven for wetland birds. Over the week we’d learned the first rule of mobile home sites: location matters. The vans may be identical inside, but it makes a huge difference if you’re closer to the sanitation block or the sea. With the newest “Capraia Mer” models set amid pine trees just metres from an idyllic sandy beach, and featuring large terraces and heated outdoor showers, this felt as luxurious as family “camping” can get. We spent most of the day in the sea, gazing out towards Elba and Monte Cristo, while the kids lobbied to stay another week – and not move a step from the beach.

The trip was provided by Atout France and Air Corsica (aircorsica.com). Two-bedroom mobiles homes at Camping Aria Marina cost from €45 a night, and Camping Kalliste from €264 a week. Chalets for four at San Damiano cost from €329 a week

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