Corsican Shores Under Sail

Board Le Ponant at the Nice port in the late afternoon. With only 64 guests, embarkation takes minutes rather than hours. The ship departs in the early evening and the Promenade des Anglais recedes behind the stern as the three masts catch the last of the August light above the Baie des Anges. Corsica is three hours south and the first port arrives tomorrow morning.

Saint-Florent sits at the mouth of the Aliso River where it meets the Gulf of Saint-Florent, a natural harbour backed by the Desert des Agriates, one of the most remote and undeveloped landscapes in Corsica. The old Genoese citadel above the town and the Romanesque Nebbio Cathedral just outside the walls are the town’s two defining monuments. The Desert des Agriates coast north of the port, accessible only on foot or by boat, has some of the finest and least-visited beaches in the western Mediterranean: Loto and Saleccia are two kilometres of white sand and turquoise water with no road access and, in early September, almost no other visitors. Le Ponant’s tender can reach Saleccia directly.

Ajaccio is Corsica’s capital and Napoleon Bonaparte’s birthplace, a fact the city carries with a mix of pride and occasional exhaustion. The Musée Fesch, assembled by Napoleon’s uncle Cardinal Joseph Fesch, holds the largest collection of Italian paintings in France outside the Louvre, with works by Botticelli, Titian and Veronese in a building that most visitors to Ajaccio walk past entirely. The Cathedral where Napoleon was baptised in 1771, the Place du Général de Gaulle and the Maison Bonaparte, where the family lived and the young Napoleon grew up, give the morning its historical weight. The covered market in the Place du Diamant, selling Corsican charcuterie, cheese, chestnut honey and myrtle liqueur, is the finest single food market on the island.

The Gulf of Sant’Amanza is one of the most secluded anchorages on Corsica’s southern coast, a sheltered inlet surrounded by maquis-covered hillsides where the scent of wild rosemary, cistus and immortelle drifts across the water. Le Ponant anchors here and the tender operates to the shore. The landscape is the experience: the granite formations above the waterline, the clarity of the water over the rocky bottom and the complete absence of roads within the immediate area. This is Corsica without infrastructure, the island as it was before tourism, and it is accessible in this form only from a vessel that can anchor close inshore. The Golfe de Figari just to the west and the approach to the Strait of Bonifacio visible to the south give the afternoon its navigational drama.

Bonifacio is the most extraordinary town in Corsica and one of the most extraordinary in the western Mediterranean. A medieval walled city built on top of a limestone cliff that drops 70 metres directly into the Strait of Bonifacio, the town appears from the sea as a continuation of the rock itself, the Genoese houses and the citadel ramparts extending the cliff line until it is impossible to say where the geology ends and the architecture begins. Le Ponant anchors below and the tender operates to the port. The upper town is accessed by the Montée du Rastello stairs. The King of Aragon’s staircase, cut directly into the cliff face in a single night in 1420 according to legend, leads down 187 steps to the waterline. The Bosco cemetery at the western tip of the promontory, with its legionnaire graves and the view of Sardinia 12 kilometres south, is worth the walk to the end of the old town. The ship overnights here.

A second day in Bonifacio with the ship still at anchor and the town in a different light. The morning visitors from the day tours have not yet arrived and the lanes of the upper town have a quality at dawn that the afternoon does not replicate. The sea caves beneath the cliff, accessible by boat from the port, give the geological character of the limestone a completely different perspective from the inside. The Lavezzi Islands just to the south, a protected marine reserve of pink granite islands surrounded by exceptional snorkelling water, are accessible by Le Ponant’s tender or by organised boat trip from the port.

Calvi is the finest harbour town in Corsica, its Genoese citadel rising above a bay of the clearest water on the island’s north coast. The citadel’s interior, a maze of lanes and religious buildings within the walls, contains the house traditionally identified as the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, a claim disputed by Genoa but maintained with quiet confidence by the Calvais. The Balagne hinterland behind the town, known as the garden of Corsica for its olive groves and orchards, is accessible by the narrow-gauge Tramway de la Balagne train that runs along the coast. The beach north of the town, stretching four kilometres to the Punta della Revellata lighthouse, is the finest arc of sand on the north coast. Le Ponant departs in the evening for the crossing back to Nice.