Central Corsica, France —

There’s that old country western tune, “40 Miles of Bad Road,” and just in case you wondered where it was located, it’s right here in Central Corsica. And, it’s more like 60.

Our guidebook recommends bringing detailed maps and a lot of patience to a Corsican journey. They don’t need to tell you to bring along a great deal of fear. That is supplied for you once you’re here. Corsica tops out at just under 9,000 ft. and has twenty peaks over 6000 ft. The main road down the center of the island seems to incorporate extensive visits to all of them.

Note to civic planners on a budget: Paint white lines down the middle of your bike paths and call them “state roads”. So, now we have narrow. Add to that sheer and impossibly steep. Windy does not cut it. The curves are Madhatter circular and mostly blind. Guardrails are something I kept trying to imagine present. Actually, none of these terms was running through my mind on our four-hour journey. Just, abyss, Abyss, ABYSS, repeat.

Thankfully, we did not encounter much traffic and most of it was visitors like us, crawling along at a handful of kilometers an hour. Only the local, homicidal electricians and plumbers who service the area must be watched out for. These roads are firmly wired into their DNA and I am sure that they could drive them at high speeds, drunk, at night, no headlights, no problem. They seem to have little patience for the rest of us.

In retrospect, I wish I had taken a lot of photos of our Corsican crossing. It was a spectacular journey but I was distracted. The only one I have is the one below, a Corsican roadblock where visitors, electricians and plumbers alike all took a short break.