After a long trip down by car and a sleepless night at the "Lemon Hotel" (an amusing attempt to vamp up the Formula 1 brand a touch we think) off the route de Soleil, a 6 hour Ferry trip from Nice to Ajaccio, and then a much longer car journey to the start in Calzana than anticipated. This was basically due to the fact that we had looked at the map and assumed that the road was nice and straight and flat. This is Corsica so the predicted hour drive was infact much closer to 3 hours!
No sweat, this just meant enjoying a few more hairpin bends in the dark than expected whilst not being intimidated by the slightly mad Corsican drivers which seem to be in abundance on the island.
Eventually we roll up in Calzana past midnight, this means that our reservation at the Gite d'etape counts for nothing, as the receptionist was long gone, and we of course had no idea which room we were supposed to be in. The hotel up the road was fully booked, the only activity in town were 3 guys sat at the bar. They seemed friendly and advised us to go back to the Gite d'etape to see if we could find our room. We did this, trying quietly to open bedroom doors, but each one seem to contain several snoring hikers - we gave up and returned to the bar.
Further advice from our 3 friends suggested perhaps hotels in Calvi of which there were plenty, but we knew we had a big day ahead, and wanted to minimise "the faff" in the morning.
So when Jean one of the guys offered us a couple of rooms in his place next door right at the trail head of the GR20 we didn't need much persuading!
We settled down for the night, another sleepless one in anticipation of what lay ahead!
