The Napoleon Roller Coaster

Day 23 - August 21

The evening I went to sleep I discovered the campsite had washing machines - unfortunately, I was not able to use them the previous night, so I waited for the reception to open and was happily washing away at 7 am. After all the swimming (and, admittedly, sweating), it was nice to get my stuff odorless...

It was only after 9 am that I started - however, with a good feeling of being clean again. An hour or so later, I was at the pass at 400 meters, mind you, this is above sea level, where I started from, so each meter of altitude had to be climbed….After a bump in the road, I had this strange feeling that something was wrong with my bike seat.

Getting close to Ajaccio, commerce definitely picked up. It reminded me of my bike tour of some fifteen years ago, in Alaska, where I rode through some real pristine landscape, but getting to the vicinity of Anchorage, suddenly you saw all kinds of shops, stores, dealerships, strip malls - similar was the feeling while closing in to Ajaccio. One benefit was that I found a superb bakery shop, the produce looked so tasty, I felt I could have bought (at least) one of everything.

Traffic jams started developing close to town - and the outskirts of Ajaccio were anything but pretty (about 70,000 live there - about 20% of all Corsicans). I spotted a large Intersport shop and realized that I had trusted my wheel so much not to get a puncture (in vain), that I was carrying no spare tubes, so I bought two, just to be sure. At the shop, I took a closer look at my saddle - which I had purchased not long ago for not little money - and realized it was broken. The shop did have new saddles, but even the most expensive one was of poor quality. I was quite upset, but then I remembered that I had mastered such upsets in the past well - for example, when my frame broke many years ago on top of Nauders pass, I was able to find a guy who welded it. Yes, the seat could be welded! There were so many businesses around, sure I could find one. I looked up the word "to weld" and people started pointing at some place a couple of hundred meters away.

It turned out to be a car shop. It was getting close to noon and in Corsica a lot of stores close then for siesta. I managed to find the owner, who said, in English, "yes, we can do it, but we are very expensive - do you have a lot of money?", people around laughed. One of his workers came, dismantled the saddle and disappeared. A little while later, he was back, smiling, started putting the saddle back on - it breaks again. Oh no. Second try - same. He winks at me and comes back like thirty minutes later. He fabricated a sort of a metal tube around the part that broke that I believe will hold forever - wow, all of this in his lunchbreak. I ask how much I owe him, points me to be boss, who was chilling behind his desk, with the feet up. Again, I want to pay, he says "bon voyage!". I could hardly believe it - spending over an hour, with three tries and wanting nothing in exchange? On the other side of the road, I saw a restaurant with an ice-cream parlor, I walk over to get a large serving of icecream. The woman, also speaking English, asked me what it was for and says, "Ah, this guy is my son-in-law, you should get him some cake instead". So I ended up "paying" with a nice cake, he was very appreciative. Thanks, you nice Corsicans!

Even though I had no fixed itinerary whatsoever, I was still behind this nonexistent timetable - after this saddle experience, plus the washing in the morning, it was like 1 pm by the time I got to town, so I did the express city tour. As there was a line of people, I only saw the birthplace of Napoleon from the outside, skipped the dome and stuck to a few streets. Especially the center is very pretty.

At a tourist information, a young unexperienced girl gave me some worthless piece of information, after I asked her about the roads along the coast, she told me there were none, when my map clearly marked these as especially scenic. "There is only one road out of Ajaccio" - wrong.

A bit right she was, however, there was really just one major artery leading outside town. There was a bike path for a little while, next to the coast and close to the port with large cruise ships, ferries and yachts, but it ended and soon I was on a 3-lane motorway, with apparently no alternative. Some drivers honked at me, but what was there to do - it turned out they were wrong, biking was allowed on that section, it was only later that prohibiting signs came. The "only" road the young girl mentioned went in the southeast direction, I stuck to the coast, heading south. This took me right outside the runway of Ajaccio's airport, I saw an Air France take off for Nizza, but, alas, no plane was landing at that time, it would have been right overhead. Oh well.

Traffic was still quite heavy when I reached the town of Porticcio, in a bay with a nice view of the capital. I went in for a quick dip, just opposite a Radisson Blu hotel, the waves were really nice.

Now soon after Porticcio the road became smaller and the traffic died down - no wonder why: what now came was a crazy rollercoaster of coastal roads - while I did not measure it, some sections had gradients of close to 20%, which is a lot, especially for a fully loaded bike. I spoke to some people later and they said they had trouble navigating these roads - by car! Some of these slopes I could master only by winding sideways, i.e. going from the right lane to the left and back, most drivers understood what was going on and steered around me patiently. There were passing scooters giving me the thumbs up for this endeavour.

For all the suffering, I had a wonderful view of the coastline.

Close to sunset, the rollercoaster ended and I reached the plains - a sort of an agricultural part of the island. There were huge fields which were being irrigated.

Back to the the coast, the town of Propiano could be seen, but was still 10 kilometers away. I had the plan of reaching it, however, the usual hotel situation came up, i.e. no rooms below Eur 300, but there on the coast was a number of campings, I picked a 4-star one. The reception was already closed, but a friendly caretaker from Romania (there were quite a few workers from that country employed in shops, and restaurants) got a golf cart, packed me and my bike (!) on it and we drove up a steep hill, where I stayed the night. Here, too, was a restaurant with loud music, but I was too tired even to move.

Here is the map for the day, It was roughly 90 kilometers, with 1300 meters of elevation gain and loss. I actually felt it to be double, but the facts are facts. This is probably because the beginning of the day was steep, then it was flat for a long time, followed by the roller-coaster .