Corsica 2019: the north, from Balagne to Bastia

My first time in Corsica, based in the Balagne, the "Tuscany of Corsica", in the north-west of the island: ten days of clear sea, hilltop villages, scented maquis and beaches reachable only by boat.

In the Balagne, hills covered in olive groves and vineyards slope down to the sea and medieval stone villages sit on the heights. My base was Île-Rousse (Isula Rossa in Corsican), a small town founded by Pasquale Paoli in 1758, with its Place Paoli, white sand beaches right in the centre and the covered market where you find Corsican cheeses, cured meats and maquis honey.

I went to Algajola, between two granite headlands, with a long golden beach swept by the wind and a small Genoese citadel on the sea. There I measured the day by the colour of the water: turquoise in the morning, emerald in the early afternoon, golden at sunset.

In Calvi, the "capital" of the Balagne, I saw the large Genoese citadel overlooking the gulf, with its bastioned walls, the cobbled streets of the upper town and the view over the bay. Calvi claims to be the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, a disputed legend. The beach below the citadel is six kilometres long.

Inland I went to San Antonino, one of the "plus beaux villages de France": a maze of narrow alleys and stone stairs on a hilltop at 500 metres, with a 360-degree view from the sea to the mountains. Pigna is the village of craftspeople and musicians: every summer, concerts and workshops in ceramics, lute-making and weaving are held in its shaded lanes.

I made the most adventurous excursion to the Fangu gorge and the beaches of Ghignu and Saleccia, reachable only by sea or by dirt tracks. Saleccia, for many the most beautiful beach in Corsica, is a kilometre of white sand lined with pines, with no services or facilities. Ghignu is even more isolated.

In Corte, in the geographic centre of the island and historic capital of Pasquale Paoli's independent Corsica, I saw the citadel on a rocky spur above the gorges of the Restonica and the Tavignano, from where the inland routes were controlled.

I found little mass tourism, and the mountains are never far from the sea.