Pissed it in!
I guess I better say more than that about it. And I should point out it's easy to say that in hindsight - it was big walk, and I'm still feeling it nearly a week after finishing.
So what was it? GR stands for Grand Randonnee, denoting a typically long, 'grand' walking trail. The GR20 traverses the mountains of Corsica - it's about 180km long and ascends/descends a total of something like 10km vertically. Depending on which source you read. Something in the 10s of 1000s of people attempt it every year - depending on which source you read!
We chose to walk from south to north, which is not the standard way. We had a vague idea that the south was less spectacular than the north, but even the first day of walking took us from sea views into spectacularly jagged granite peaks. Even with tents, you have to camp at designated refuges, and so our first evening started with buying a cold beer each. Already we started to see this would be somewhat different to wilderness walking in Australia...
To save on internet time, and so as not to encroach on Kims up and coming, detailed report - I'll keep this fairly simple. What followed day one was a further 15 days of walking, every day. An inexplicable number of vistas were seen along the way. So many that without really concentrating - it already seems like a blur!
The landscape is just so rugged and changeable down there that every day we would see so much. It was hard to grasp at times, as we looked into the distant mountains, that over the last few days we had been up and over most of the ridges we could see!
Other highlights were the Corsican cheese and saucisson, and planning as much as we could to get to the bigger 'gites' for some stages to watch Holland play in the Euro cup! Towards the end we also spent one day ascending Monte Cinto, at 2706m the highest mountain on Corsica.
And so now, nearly a week after we finished and spent some time lazing around on the beach at Ile Rousee, my knees still groan at me as soon as I start walking up stairs! Hopefully I won't be resting too long though - I should be heading back to Chamonix soon for a month or so of mountaineering.
I guess I better say more than that about it. And I should point out it's easy to say that in hindsight - it was big walk, and I'm still feeling it nearly a week after finishing.
So what was it? GR stands for Grand Randonnee, denoting a typically long, 'grand' walking trail. The GR20 traverses the mountains of Corsica - it's about 180km long and ascends/descends a total of something like 10km vertically. Depending on which source you read. Something in the 10s of 1000s of people attempt it every year - depending on which source you read!
We chose to walk from south to north, which is not the standard way. We had a vague idea that the south was less spectacular than the north, but even the first day of walking took us from sea views into spectacularly jagged granite peaks. Even with tents, you have to camp at designated refuges, and so our first evening started with buying a cold beer each. Already we started to see this would be somewhat different to wilderness walking in Australia...
To save on internet time, and so as not to encroach on Kims up and coming, detailed report - I'll keep this fairly simple. What followed day one was a further 15 days of walking, every day. An inexplicable number of vistas were seen along the way. So many that without really concentrating - it already seems like a blur!
The landscape is just so rugged and changeable down there that every day we would see so much. It was hard to grasp at times, as we looked into the distant mountains, that over the last few days we had been up and over most of the ridges we could see!
Other highlights were the Corsican cheese and saucisson, and planning as much as we could to get to the bigger 'gites' for some stages to watch Holland play in the Euro cup! Towards the end we also spent one day ascending Monte Cinto, at 2706m the highest mountain on Corsica.
And so now, nearly a week after we finished and spent some time lazing around on the beach at Ile Rousee, my knees still groan at me as soon as I start walking up stairs! Hopefully I won't be resting too long though - I should be heading back to Chamonix soon for a month or so of mountaineering.
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