The Village

It seemed time to wander in the hills again, over new ground this time and using park4night we found a possible wild camp, next to a river swimming spot. So that was the day planned. We weren't too hopeful about the overnight because one of the only two or three comments on the app mentioned that there was a restaurant owner who needed to give permission.

So we left the e Gradelle campsite with its interesting interpretation of the flag of Corsica and headed south.

This swimming spot was busy but there's plenty of room for everyone. Most cars at the roadside had Corsican plates (2A and 2B) so they would be locals or maybe visitors with hire cars. The track from the little shack restaurant to the 'wild camp' is just 100m or so but the start was blocked by a car and low tree and also there is a noisy generator halfway along, feeding power to the pizza shack, so clearly the "restaurant" owner would need to be consulted and we decided not to stay.

The swimming was fun although not so much swimming as lying around in lovely pools or lazily lounging on the hot rocks. This is the most appropriate photo I have of the afternoon.

I tried to copy the local art of cairn building. These aren't so much a pile of stones as they would be in the UK, rather single stones are arranged carefully, providing true balancing art.

Meanwhile Dawn caught up with news from home. 

Then we scanned park4night again and selected another spot in Parking du Couvent Saint Francois at Vico. It seemed as though it might be a little bizarre to sleep there but we drove anyway to find a lovely spot, high above the village. It felt just a little too much like parking at a Convent and we couldn't bring ourselves to stop and set-up the table and chairs in front of the church doors with Nuns presumably walking in and out. We imagined that they would complain although there was always the hope it's a Silent Order.

We did what we sometimes do and looked at the map to find an interesting road and decided to explore up to a dead-end. There was a hamlet at the turn-off and the first things we saw were a series of abandoned cars and then the usual cows getting in the way. It did appear that there was something at the end of the road so we pushed on up the hill.

Suddenly we were at the end of the road in the middle of this little hamlet and there, right next to us was a group of four people sitting under their tree, looking at us. It was so tiny that turning around would have been noisy and smelly (exhaust). So we stopped, jumped out and using our best endeavours in French, we apologised for the intrusion.

One guy jumped up and came out to say "you're English" in his best New York accent and from that point on we got to know "The Village".

Geoffrey had just arrived from Paris, as he does each summer, with his daughter Valentine, to stay at his house. He was catching up with one set of neighbours. We explained that we were exploring and also looking for somewhere to "park for the night". We looked enquiringly up the steep hill that we had yet to drive up and Geoffrey said that it stopped at the church but there was an area of ground that would be suitable for an overnight but of course "you might not leave".

At that moment Philippe walked down the road wearing a boiler-suit covered in grass strimmings. He was friendly too and we introduced ourselves but then Geoffrey, having just arrived, needed to greet his village friend and then he introduced us and it all started again. This time it was Philippe who checked with Geoffrey and then said that we might not be able to leave because "no-one has ever come here to stay overnight".

It was great fun, especially as English was spoken by some and we were soon directed up the hill and here we would spend the night next to a church.

First action is always to do the British thing and make a cup of tea and whilst drinking this and soaking up the view, another villager, smartly dressed in Chinos and a Gant polo, walked up and introduced himself also as Philippe. Dawn glanced at me with an almost indiscernible raise of an eyebrow, as now we were starting to get a little nervous. He wanted to stress that we should keep the area clean and I wanted to say that unlike the French we had our own toilet in the Landy and used it, instead we said "of course we will, we are fully self contained".

Asking where he lived, developed into him pointing out the house "full of flowers" and then we were invited into the garden to the terrace, where he and his wife, Christine, chatted, served beer and great charcuterie.

They have lived there for two years, retiring to Christine's grandmother's house after careers in Arcachon on the west coast of France, she as a Pharmacist and he as editor of a Bordeaux newspaper. We had a nice talk about The Village as well as our various careers and families. A little later Geoffrey and his daughter walked up the road looking for us and joined the group. Again they asked us not to identify The Village or, as Valentine said motioning to the charcuterie, "we may have to eat you". They all laughed, and I glanced at Dawn and she glanced at me. Gulp.

Geoffrey has an interesting job in Paris, having lived there for twenty years. He writes the scripts for childrens' cartoons that are found on TV. We didn't recognise any of the titles but it was interesting to hear about an unusual job.

Discussion turned to Brexit in spite of protestations from Christine that it shouldn't and spread to the selection of the new Prime Minister, the result of which we said wouldn't be known until the end of July. It was all friendly banter, well as banter goes when you are talking across three languages, French, English and Americanish.

It got a little more complicated as we later discovered that "Strimmer" Philippe's wife is also called Christine. So there are two Philippe / Christine couples in this tiny place.

We ate dinner sitting in front of the church, this felt so much easier than it would have done at the convent and the view was yet another classic. Later, twelve year old Valentine wondered up the hill to see us. She's been coming here every summer as it was her great grandmother's home and so Father de-camps during the school holiday, although Mother was not with them. Maybe her work isn't as location flexible as writing cartoon scripts.

It seems as though Valentine has a quiet life up here during the school holidays. She says that she walks around in the forest, marking trees with chalk "better than breadcrumbs" to find the route back. She wanted to know were we right wing or left wing, did we approve of Brexit, how had we voted, what religion we both are and what books we like. She wasn't impressed with the 300TDi workshop manual but then neither was I with her inside knowledge of Hansel and Gretel.