1962 - Corsica: Beauty and Squalor Side by Side

Beauty and Squalor Side by Side in the Holiday Isle

Paisley Scouts’ Memorable Visit to Corsica

[First published Paisley Daily Express, Weds, August 29, 1962]

Outlined dimly against the early-morning sky, the island of Corsica lay before us, rugged and dark. As we watched, the sun illuminated the topmost peaks, and the light quickly moved down to sea-level, revealing more and more of the island we had travelled 1200 miles to visit. With the steamer gliding slowly into Ajaccio harbour, the twelve of us in the party - eleven from the 7th Paisley (John Neilson) and one from the 18th (Coats’ Memorial) Scout Troup - breathed an audible sigh of relief, and reflected on the five days of travelling behind us...

We had left Paisley by Starlight Special on Friday, August 3 - to the “Good luck!” of a small crowd of well-wishers and the skirl of the pipes - and arrived in London shortly after 8 o’clock the following morning.  After leaving the rucksacks at the new Scout hostel, Baden-Powell House - and noting with pleasure that it was being used, as B.P. himself would have wished, as a meeting place for Scouts from all over the world - we spent the Saturday in London, and left from Victoria on the 9 pm train for Newhaven. The Channel crossing to Dieppe was uneventful, and we were soon speeding through the darkness towards Paris, which we reached at 6.15 am.

After breakfast we visited the Elysee Palace, residence of President de Gaulle, and were followed round the block by two conscientious members of the Garde Republicain, armed with sub-machine guns. Two bus-loads of troops and a riot-wagon also lay handy. Paris is a lovely city: but, seen on an overcast day through eyes half-closed with sleep, it tends to lose some of its romantic appeal. Three of us, in fact, spend the afternoon on British soil - or rather, British carpets - in the British Embassy, explaining about a lost passport and having an emergency one made out. We left the Gare de Lyon for Marseilles at 9 pm, and travelled down through France in a hot, stuffy compartment, with the corridor full of young National Servicemen returning from leave.

At 8.30 on Monday morning, we caught our first glimpse of the blue Mediterranean, and an hour later, we arrived in Marseilles. The mile between the station and the offices of the French Line to Corsica, where wer wher to have our tickets checked for security reasons, convinced us that Marseilles was, as the news reports have indicated, a city with problems. Refugees from Algeria crowded the pavements and waterfront, military patrols were very much in evidence, and every available piece of wall was covered with the inevitable “OAS - SALAN” inscription.

The heat was intense, and we rested during the day by the citadel in the Old Harbour, acclimatising slowly. At 5pm, we went onboard the “Gouvener-Général Chanzy” and, an hour later, steamed out of Marseilles, past the immortal Chateau d’If. During the early morning, a French jet-fighter circled around overhead for over half-an-hour, but apart from that, our first Mediterranean cruise (4th Class) passed without incident. And now, at last, we were sailing into Ajaccio harbour...

The third largest island in the Mediterranean, Corsica is 110 miles from north to south, and 50 miles wide, with over 600 miles of coastline. The population, mostly of peasant stock, is about 200,000, with Ajaccio, the capital, accounting for 38,000 of them. Politically part of France since the 1760’s, it has a dialect of its own, more italian than French; and indeed, most of the place-names were spelt, and pronounced, in an Italian way. This much we had gleaned from guide books, etc., and we were now about to see for ourselves.

Corsica has been called “The Scented Isle” because of the sweet-smelling shrubs and bushes; but it was not the maquis that made itself apparent at our first encounter, but the stench of human squalor arising from the unsanitary and unhygienic (even by Continental standards) way of life. Flies droned everywhere; and, in the main thoroughfare, a large rat lay dead on the pavement.

We spent but 50 minutes in this decaying part of the capital, and left by train - on a track whose gauge appeared to vary with every fresh mile - for Corte, a town in the interior, some 45 miles to the north-east. From here, we planned to hike through the mountains and down to the west coast and Ajaccio in a week.

Lonely Valley

Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday were spent following up the Restonica Valley, first by road for 10 miles, and then by dusty mule-track. During the day, the sun blazed down from a cloudless blue sky, and the dust rose in clouds about our feet. Lizards swarmed from every rock, and armies of ants carried away to a some hidden storehouse pieces of food and anything else that we dropped. Apart from a few farms at the lower end, the valley was uninhabited, except for semi-wild sheep, and cows with large bells that clanged annoyingly at night.

The sun disappeared about 7.30, and it was pitch-dark by 8pm - an interesting phenomenon that left us cooking the evening meal by torchlight the first night. By night, myriads of unknown stars sparkled in the jet-black velvet of the sky, and shooting stars were visible every ten minutes or so.

On Thursday, August 9, at about 3pm, we crossed the pass, the Col. de Bocca-Soglia, at 6665 ft. From our vantage point, we could see the blue Mediterranean spread out before us; and, 200 miles away to the north, the shadowy coast of France. Above us, the jagged soiless rock raised spiky teeth into the blue, and yes, there was a tiny patch of snow on the flanks of one of the 8000-ft peaks.

Once through the pass, we found a quick descent through magnificent mountain-scenery on a zig-zag path of Disney-like character, and then we were in the main valley on the western side of the pass, that of the Fiume Grosso. About two o’clock on Friday, we walked out of the chestnut groves into the little village of Guagno, and no Promised Land has ever looked so sweet to dusty and exhausted travellers.

From Guagno, a daringly-engineered road led through some dozen similar villages to the coast 25 miles away, and we reached the sea on the Sunday evening at a cluster of houses going by the name of Sagone and surrounded by cactus bushes and palm-trees.

Soup - with a fork!

Here we stayed till Tuesday morning, swimming in water of a colour that we had previously seen only in postcards. Sagone has a mere half-dozen houses, two hotels, and a post office; but, to us, i t was the realisation of our wildest dreams, set as it was in a small bay with a dazzling white beach. Our stay in Sagone was made the more memorable by the four Scouters deciding to treat themselves to a 20s 6d meal in one of the hotels at 10 o’clock on the Sunday evening. Greatly intrigued, no doubt, by the kilts, the serving girls omitted to bring us spoons for the first course; and so, thinking that this was some ancient Corsican custom, we manfully polished off two plates of Minestrone soup each - with a knife and fork.

On the Tuesday, the last bus for Ajaccio having passed full at 9.30am, we spent an hour in the post office, making frantic phone-calls for taxis, and eventually two were summoned from the capital with the help of Madame Antionette, the post-mistress. Strapping the rucksacks onto the roof, six of us piled into each taxi, and, stopping only to have a glass or two of wine, we were off. The 25-miles taxi-run into Ajaccio - the first ten miles along the coast, and then through the mountains on narrow, twisting roads with nothing between our wheels and a 250-ft drop - was an experience in itself; and we stepped out in the capital at 4pm on Tuesday in a temperature of 98°F in the shade.

Ajaccio was in festive mood for the anniversary of Napoleon’s birth, and the evening was rounded off with a parade through the streets and the most noisy firework display we have ever witnessed. We left Corsica at 6pm on the following day, full of happy memories, and with the sun, as ever, beating down from a deep-blue sky.  As the “Ville de Bordeaux” drew away from the dock-side, two French Scouts threw up their berets, and our two Rovers threw down their own balmorals. It was a fitting end to a marvellous holiday, and we were all extremely sad to leave the island.

And so began the long journey home, which we reached on the Sunday morning, with sun-burned and peeling faces, and a host of travellers’ tales to keep the rest of the troop spellbound for months to come.

Donkey-Transport

Corsica, we had found, was a land of great contrasts - seeming affluence on the one hand, appalling poverty on the other. In Ajaccio main street, there were modern department stores that could have graced the West End of London, while, less than ten miles away, small clusters of decaying houses shared a communal outside oven.  The houses were simply furnished, but scrupulously clean; and there being no slate on the island, the roofs were tiled, or frequently thatched. Donkeys appeared to be the main mode of transport; and on estimate about 70 percent of the vehicles on the island belonged to French tourists, and another 10 percent to the French Foreign Legion, stationed in Corsica since Algeria’s independence.

The Legionaires were apparently taking rather badly to the peaceful life, and there were no fewer than fifty desertions while we were there, one band attacking and shooting some campers 20 miles to the north of us at Sagone. Everywhere fluttered the Corsican emblem, a dark negroid head on a white background, and one gathered that the local populace were Corsican first, and French second. In this, and many other ways, the friendly and hospitable islanders showed a strange affinity to the Scots that, at times, was most marked,

As we walked through County Square that Sunday morning, we held our heads high. We had achieved something that few others had - so far as we are aware, we were the first Scottish Scouts to visit Corsica - and we felt justifiably proud, and perhaps just a little superior.