Lumio
Our first visit to Corsica was to St Florent and we wanted to explore more of the north west of the island for a week in late July 2018. The area around Calvi seemed promising and we found a lovely apartment up in the hillside village of Lumio with views from the mountains to the south and then over the Bay to Calvi beyond.
We knew from our initial research that northern Corsica was quite mountainous, but on arriving in Lumio we really appreciated how rugged, high and imposing the mountains were.
The views in the photos below of the mountains and the bay are all taken from our apartment up in Lumio. In the distance the sunset shot shows the twinkling lights of Calvi across the bay.
Calvi has a small airport which takes flights from Paris, Bastia and Marseille, but not from the U.K. as far as we could trace. Some flights would fly past the airport, tracking the mountain range inland and then land towards the sea. The views for those passengers would be brilliant.
Our stay in Lumio was a joy, from start to finish. Our “ meet the AirBNB host” instructions were to meet up in the car park at the chemists at 5pm. And at the allotted hour, we were there and “ Charles” turned up on his scooter – “ are you from New Zealand?” “ Mais oui “!! FOLLOW ME!!
So we did, up the hill to a lovely villa, that had the views you can see above, but that was split into two quite separate apartments, the top floor was ours and the ground floor was Charles and his wife’s.
They were retired from running restaurants in different parts of the world, they were “ potageurs “, a lovely vegetable garden with fruit trees. Charles was determined for improve his English by speaking in that language to me. I was determined to improve my French by speaking in that language to him!! Great fun.
On our first evening we wanted to go to a local restaurant, no problem for Charles – he made our booking, and we followed him on his scooter up the wrong way on “ one way streets”, that were a total squeeze for our car – retract wing mirrors to get through!!!
Lumio has a three restaurants, a couple of small stores for fresh bread and fruit & vegetables, so good basic stuff. But there was a new U Supermarket about ten minutes drive towards Calvi that had all our self catering needed, even a fresh fish shop, butchers, wine, croissants etc etc
Lumio & Calvi – beaches
A ten minute drive down towards the sea from Lumio are several beaches, some sandy, some rocky outcrops and beautiful sea swimming, and we used these most days. Towards and on the outskirts of Calvi there are more sandy beaches and hotel / holiday accommodation.
Cooling in a mountain stream!
The mountains at the back of Calvi go up to 2500 metres, and are stunning granite edifices. In late July there were still patches of snow in the north facing gullies and we had heard there were mountain streams one could bathe in. So we headed past the Calvi Airport, going to Manso – past Ponte Vecchiu, past Valley Fango Pool 2 and past Manso to a bridge over the river at Continca.
This is what we saw on the way and when we arrived at the bridge at Continca we found and enjoyed lying back in beautifully smoothed out rock pools – take lunch, it’s worth a day out :-
Exploring Calvi
A safe harbour, a port, railway station, a citadel for defence, cobbled streets to explore – Calvi has all of these with views and charm to boot. As we do, we wandered and enjoyed all of these, the history and even acquired a new pair of jandles- aka flip flops!
Scandola – UNESCO nature reserve
The pictures of Scandola, rock formations and sea caves, are spectacular but ccess to Scandola is realistically limited to expedition from the sea. The Trip Advisor reports were quite mixed, and when you appreciate that the journey to, during and return are in open sea, some caution is needed.
We checked the weather forecasts and determined a day that was going to have gentle breezes – critical for a modest to smooth sea condition. Secondly of the boat options, a “ rib” was the quickest, but we knew it would be far and away the roughest. Both my wife and I have had back issues and a “ relentless jarring” in a rib to Scandola was not on our menu!!
We chose the Columbo Line red hulled Motor Sailor Catamaran. Checking it out down in Calvi Port, one could see it was a substantial boat and being a catamaran was inherently more stable than a single hull boat.
And all went really well, it was not inexpensive, but it was an expedition we were unlikely to repeat and I am glad we did it. In retrospect I would not take young children on such a trip. We knew how long it would take, and we had good advance knowledge of the weather. At sea the weather and sea conditions can change quite quickly. Had the weather been at all uncertain, we would not have gone on the trip .
But the whole trip to Scandola was excellent, we had a stunning day, as hopefully a few photos can show.
L’ile – Rousse
In reading about the Calvi area, I had fastened on the train trip that hugs the coastline up to L’ile-Rousse from Calvi. It looked quaint, and L’ile- Rousse seemed a place to explore, beach, swim, lunch etc.
We were sad to leave Corsica, and had only seen a small part of this lovely island. It’s part of France, but it’s not French, it’s Corsican and proudly so. We have much more to explore when we return.
Travels with My Wife 