Day 13 Corte to Sermano

Guide says: 5hrs 30min, 17k, 950m ascent, 620m descent …… but we cheated. We got to the chapel of S. Martino, then came by road from there.

This was to have been the longest day, with the most ascent, but that short cut along a road, missing Castellare, saved us 390m of descent and 140m of ascent at the cost of 4 k of road walking. Coming at the end of the day we thought it a good deal.

Anyway back to the beginning of the day.

After a good breakfast, where we were actually offered more croissants etc. We left, brought supplies and headed for the trail.

Old bridge on edge of town

Nice flowers in town

Unfortunately I picked the wrong trail on my gps tracking/mapping app. It was a variant. Fortunately we recognized this before we left civilization. We then had to go back into town and leave in another direction, sort of 90degrees to where we were. Anyway we were quite late leaving town. Then started a very long uphill section. Very different countryside today, much more open.

We stopped for a bar close to the top, and then had energy for the final push. The view from the Bocca do Civenti was spectacular.

Then it was a traverse first across open hillside (not to my liking) and the thru chestnuts and oaks, and past some great looking goats, to Sta Lucia-di-Murcurio, a pretty well kept village with good views and a water fountain and that’s all. Here we had lunch on the steps of the church.

While there we saw a red kite quartering the hill sides. Also a Swiss gentleman rode up up on a bike. It appeared he was going to try and ride down the path we had just come up. Well good luck to him.

After lunch it was down into the next valley, we inadvertently cheated this bit missing the turn off the road, but at the bottom it was back on the trail and heading up yet again to the chapel. I was pretty dead by the time we got there. And this is where we started our final short cut.

View down to village not visited

Lots of blackberries later we arrived at what looked like a very locked up gite. We sat outside and relaxed. After 1/2 an hour or so madam emerged from her siesta to tell us the black door was open and to let ourselves in. So we did.

Shower, laundry, drinks on the veranda, dinner.

A good life.

Diner, a great salad, pork chops and home fries (piping hot) and creme brûlée with dark chocolate ice-cream. Not losing weight today.