Wednesday 30 October 2013

Day Twelve on the GR20 ~ Bavella to Conca: Done and Dusted!

The Magic Continues All the Way to Conca

Although escape to civilisation is always close at hand and a hot meal at a refuge or gîte can be had each night en route, in many ways the GR20 is still quite a wild walk. Much of the track is rough and rocky, making the going quite demanding. In quite a few places, especially - but not only - in the northern section, there is some energetic scrambling where you've got no choice but use your hands.  While the paths don't visit the heights of some of the big walks in the Alps, there are places with terrific exposure where you want to move carefully. For me though, what makes the GR a "wild" place is simply the incredibly rugged nature of the landscape. And, amazingly, this ruggedness is sustained right through the last day of the route - which I hope will be illustrated in this post.

A digression though before continuing. A couple of days ago the seminal rock and roll artist Lou Reed kicked the bucket. Given his lifestyle, it wasn't a big surprise that he died of complications after a liver transplant. Anyway, those of you who are somewhere around my age and familiar with his music and have put one and one together will know what's coming; here's a rendition of Lou Reed's greatest hit:


Wild, eh!

Okay, back to business. Despite having a fairly long walk ahead of us we weren't bothered to make an early start from the Village de Bavella on the last day. For one thing, there was relatively little climbing to be done and what there was looked to be generally quite gradual. There was lots of descending in the offing, but even that looked mostly easy. Here are the figures for the walk ...
  • Distance: 19 km
  • Total ascent: 700 m
  • Total descent: 1670 m
  • Time: 7 hours
It looked like a lovely day awaited us. Here are some snippets illustrating what Paddy Dillon has to say about today's walk ... "apart from a few steep and rugged climbs .. it is mostly an easy walk, and some parts of the path are level and pose no problems. The mountain scenery is remarkably good throughout the first half of the walk, and the surroundings remain quite rugged right to the end. However, there is a definite feel that height is being lost - the vegetation becomes more exotic, the temperature rises, and ultimately walkers see the village of Conca beckoning, with the sea beyond". (He has a nice turn of phrase, doesn't he?)

... and here's what the route looks like on the map ...

Village de Bavella to Conca
If you look closely at the map you will see that the route winds its way through and past some very rugged little peaks, especially in its first half. There is a refuge that some people use as their last stop before heading to Conca - and others use as a base camp for rock climbing nearby - tucked in under some of those crags about an hour and a half after leaving Bavella.

We'd decided we would stay in Conca for the night rather than rush to get there in time for the shuttle to Porto Vecchio, so the time listed in the guide didn't really concern us. So, we had a relatively leisurely petit déjeuner at the Auberge de Col de Bavella and set out at about 7:20. As we emerged from breakfast we were greeted by the sun shining on the crags opposite ...

Welcome to my morning
So off down the initial hill along the road and into the forest we went. The trail was a little steep and rocky at first but then the going got easier before ascending fairly steeply (don't mind that when it's over a short distance because it gets the climbing over quickly) up to the Foce Finosa, the first major landmark for the day ...

Foce Finosa
I liked this sign because it made it clear to folks that they should carry out their rubbish! Actually, apart from the post-poo "white flowers" in so many places - especially in the first half of the route - there was very little garbage along the trail. Another little touch that I liked was the subtle addition of red dots above the "i's" to emphasise the grand randonnée nature of the route.

Another aside: apparently more and more folks are doing the GR20 from the south, and quite a few of them bypass this stage - perhaps because of the 1670 metres of ascent on the first day. My hardline view is that you can't say you've done the GR if you've missed a stage and started up in the mountains so you've got a downhill run over the course of the route! But more importantly, omitting the first stage means that one misses some absolutely gorgeous scenery.

As we started to drop down off the Foce Finosa these crags came into view between the trees ...

Laricio Pines and Granite Cliffs
Unfortunately, we didn't see much sunshine after that. In fact, within about an hour of our leaving the Village de Bavella the clouds started to thicken up and we only got the occasional window of sunlight shining on the peaks. Views were still good though, just somewhat muted in colour at times  ...

The way ahead is through them thar mountains ...
The fern-lined track took us down steeply past some rock draped in vegetation ...

Gray and green
... and around through some interestingly eroded features ...

Up through a keyhole slot
... before traversing a great path up on a hillside ...

Pausing on the balcony to look at the view
Di has paused at this point because we felt compelled to enjoy the view across the way. Cloud was swirling about the peaks even more at this stage, creating quite an atmospheric effect with the occasional shaft of sun highlighting patches of cliff. Here's what Di is looking across at ...

The ruggedness of the GR continues to impress
The sky was constantly changing at this stage. Just a minute later the sun had gone, but a bit of cloud had also blown away to reveal an impressive tower high on the skyline ...

An impressive skyline
As we moved further into the valley a tower that had just been another interesting feature in the landscape (refer to the 4th photo below the map) revealed more of itself. I think it's the Punta di l'Anima Damnata, which we traversed right past ...

Punta di l'Anima Damnata
By this stage we were nearing the Refuge d'I Paliri. Here's a thought if you might walk the GR20 starting from the south: the Refuge d'I Paliri is in a gorgeous setting. There is wonderful camping there if you decide to carry a tent. Stopping here would make a great start to the walk, especially if you were to make a late start from Conca. We were almost sorry to not be stopping ourselves on our way south and perhaps this is another spot we'll hike to if we ever get back to Corsica.

The views in all directions as we neared the Refuge d'I Paliri were just wonderful. Here's another ...

An atmospheric morning
A little way past the refuge when we were travelling through the forest we came to a spot where wild boars had been busy rooting around amongst the fallen pine needles ...

Something must have smelled good
As we came the Punta di l'Anima Damnata we were amazed to see that its south face was even more beautiful than the northwest aspect ...

An orange goddess cloaked in green
With the wind driving the clouds across the sky, the light was changing moment by moment before our eyes as I was taking the photos to make up this panorama ...

An incisor emerging from the depths of the earth
It actually started spitting at about this time but, because it was so warm, we didn't bother to put on our rain jackets and instead just picked up the pace a little. Shortly after I took this photo we had a descent to a river crossing below quite an attractive waterfall. There's no photo because it was raining a bit more at that point.

A bit of a climb followed. We didn't realise it at the time, but this would be the last significant ascent of the day. (Di kept rattling on about a big climb ahead - she was delighted when it didn't materialise!) Once we were up high more great views appeared in pretty much every direction. This panorama gives just a hint of what there was to see ...

Crags, pines and maquis
 The next shot shows an iconic peak in Corsica. I'm not sure what it's called but we saw lots of photos of it, featuring the prominent hole right through it ...

Holey moley! Look at that!
By this time it was raining lightly but pretty steadily, so I didn't take many more photos. We were getting pretty keen to minimise the time we had left on the trail as it did look like more rain was on the way. It did rain more heavily, quite a lot more heavily, but luckily not before we traversed across some lovely granite slabs. They were starting to get a little slippery, so we had to be a little careful when we were actually on the rock. Here we are approaching some of them ...

Slabs amongst pockets of pines
Shortly after that photo was taken it started raining properly, putting an end to photographs. We figured we probably had about an hour of walking left so we just hoofed it. One of us was starting to feel a little tired but a little encouragement fixed that. It was still warm so we reasoned we might as well leave our rain jackets off as we'd get just as wet sweating under them as we would from the rain.

A few minutes after one o'clock we hit the road leading down to Conca ...

Nearly there!
The sign is advertising La Tonnelle, the gîte d'étape we headed for once we made it the 900 metres down the road. But, before that, we had the obligatory stop at the bar in town (acknowledgement: this photo is from Paddy Dillon's guidebook) ...

The other (see Stage One) Bar du GR20
A word about La Tonnelle, the gîte at the end of the route: excellent! It's a great place to stop in so many ways. You can get either a private room, a bed in a dormitory room or pitch your tent. Plenty of beer and food and the restaurant is terrific. But more than anything, the hospitality is fantastic.

Once the excitement dies down, finishing seems to feel a bit anti-climatic, whether it was doing the route or writing this retrospective blog. Especially with a couple of less interesting photos. So. Here's one last look back at the GR to re-emphasise that the beauty keeps going right to the last couple of hours of the last day ... a little slice of life, as it were ...

Granitopia

Well, that's it ... 

... The End ...

... or, if you like this is also "The End" ...




P.S.
If you've read this far
I'd love to see some feedback below …

Best wishes,

Doug