Walking in Corsica - A Walker's Guidebook

This guidebook gives details of three long-distance walking routes in Corsica, Mare e Monti, Mare-Mare Nord and Mare-Mare Sud, which cross the island, together with 18 day-walks in prime spots both in the rugged mountains of the interior and the softer southern coastal fringe. Good local information.

Top of the list is Asterix in Corsica by R. Goscinny and A. Uderzo (1973, out of print), which captures the island’s nature in a delightfully irreverent manner. A close second is Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica (Penguin 1971), a serious read verging on gripping, this is Dorothy Carrington’s passionate and detailed account of late 1940s Corsica set against a web of spirits. Those with access to an antique book store should search out Edward Lear’s Journal of a Landscape Painter in Corsica (1870) and either of James Boswell’s travel journals dating back to the late 1700s. Latter-day traveller Paul Theroux also passed through, as recounted in his very readable The Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean (Penguin 1995).

French readers should look out for the mesmerising short stories by Guy de Maupassant including Un bandit corse (1882), Histoire corse (1881) and La Patrie de Colomba (1880). There’s also fascinating reading in Contes et Légendes de l’île de Corse by Gabriel Xavier Culioli (Éditions DCL 1998) and Claire Tiévant and Lucie Desideri’s Almanach de la mémoire et des coutumes: Corse (Albin Michel 1986).