It was back in late , way before mobile phones and travel blogs when my boss announced that he was looking for someone to head out to the island of Corsica La Corse to set up a new company base in the south of this little-known Mediterranean island. The timing was perfect β a relationship had ended, the pangs of travelling and adventure were once again surfacing and the opportunity to discover a new destination and to challenge myself was too good to resist.
The following April of I packed, sorry I crammed full, a rather shoddy plum-coloured Ford Escort and headed for Dover before a long journey down the route de Soleil to Nice in France where I spent the night at the Hotel Le Negresco on the Promenade Des Anglais, the most famous hotel in Nice, courtesy of a favour from a kind member of staff who was a personal friend of our finance managerβ¦. After a night wallowing in a glittery pea-green marble bath the size of a Renault 5, I took the 4.
I then drove across the north coast past pretty St Florent and the Patrimonio vineyards to the industrial centre of Bastia, a city I never really embraced, before hanging a right turn and heading south about kilometres, hugging the east coast of the island all the way.
With every kilometre that I drove the weather improved and as I got close to my new home it was as if someone was watching down on me as the sun was shining, the crickets were chirping and that unmistakable Mediterranean fragrance of pine trees and maquis-filled the air β I had at last arrived.
I pulled into the little hamlet of La Trinite de Porto Vecchio, just north of the main town of Porto Vecchio and checked in with the local electrician, Monsieur Marchetti, who was renting out his little apartment to me for the year. It was at this moment in my life that I can honestly say my life changed as after I had emptied the shoddy plum-coloured escort of its contents, I shut the door behind me in this little apartment, I stared at the boxes and with everything I owned and my life there in front of me, I am not afraid to say it⦠I cried!
