The first day of walking was to take me from Sermano to Corte. I was driven to the start by taxi along the scary, narrow lanes that surround Corte.
It doesn’t take long before things start to go wrong. Crossing a stream I manage to put my whole foot in the water, fortunately only fleetingly and so I am not completely waterlogged.
A little while later I take what I think must be a wrong turning. By the time I get to the bottom I try to compensate for the error, but am still not able to see the “path on the left after a bridge.” On returning to the path I exited earlier I quickly cross a small bridge and there on the left is a path. I was right all along!
The karma shortly turned against me, as the path led me to a stream that I crossed and found no more path! There was supposed to be a wide, cobbled path but I never found it, instead falling back on battling my way directly up the forested hill. I have a number of scratches to prove it.
I never found out whether I took the right path at the top of the hill.
Luckily it was only the first couple of hours that I made such mistakes. The nearest I got to making a mistake again was in the afternoon when the guide suggested I walk through a hole in a fence. I found no hole and instead followed the way marked path. I think this path must have been blocked off when the guide had been written.
I stopped briefly in a couple of villages. In the one I stopped for lunch, I compared notes with a French hiker. The path she had taken from Corte was not well sign-posted. Given how easily I had gone wrong with a well waymarked path it’s just as well I took the path I did!
The afternoon was comparatively straight-forward. A lot of lose rocks (no fun to walk on) but few gradients and even they were not steep. Just my tiring feet holding me back!
Tomorrow I leave Corte and head west towards Calacuccia.