THE COVID DETOUR 2020-Day 06-2

TET CORSICA”
(Part 2)

This is the continuation of my ride along the Trans Euro Trail Corsica (part of TET France). If you haven’t read already the first part, I recommend you to do so. You will find the first part ➡ HERE ⬅.
So, lets start with the second part of day number six of my “COVID DETOUR RIDE” which followed some nice remote tracks through the mountains of Corsica …


After a nice …

Me humming: “Oh what a wonderful world …”

break with some chocolate at Ghignu beach our ride along Corsicas …

An old shepherd hut.

northern rural areas went on. The terrain …

started to get kind of technical. This time …

Ongoing clutch torturing terrain.

a steep slope combined with bulbous big rocks was the surface to ride. I remembered myself, that Чернотas actual clutch was already about 50.000km or 30.000 mi in duty, so I forced me to ride with a foreseen riding technique, keeping the speed high despite the tricky terrain and avoided this way overexaggerating clutch wear. This terrain accompanied my black beauty and me for about 5 kilometers or 3 miles and was very exhausting caused by hot temperatures within this forlorn and windless bush land. Finally, the track …

changed to proper …

gravel and later …

to compressed sand, which made the ass of Чернотa wagging like a dogs tail. Riding on sand always is fascinating me: The faster you go, the more stable is the ride.
🤛✊🛵💨

At the end of the sandy trail, …

this old hideout was found directly along the TET Trail. Being curious I made a short exploration. Besides a …

a strange smell and plenty of…

naked rock nothing special was seen inside. Probably this cave was used in former times for keeping cattle save during the night.

*stingy thing growing on barely nothing*

For another short piece the trail followed again …

the coastline. Later the Trans Euro Trail led straight into the main mountain range of Corsica. Always following the black line on my navigation system …

the route brought my black beauty and me higher upwards and passed …

a very old looking ruin. We reached a plateau where a …

antenna hill was located just a stone’s throw away from the planned route. I decided to make a little detour …

up that hill. On top of …

it Чернотa and I …

enjoyed the nice view down to the coastline of Corsica island.

Also the way back …

Sant Antonino – Corsicas most beautiful village atop a hill.

offered a spectacular view to the 130 souls village Sant Antonino built on top of another single hill.

Always following the TET Route, this completely burnt out car wreck was found. This rusty thing looks somehow nice to me and was worth a closer look. Just …

a few hundred meters away from the car wreck, I randomly met this three friendly local young people. All of them rode some proper lightweight dirt bikes (If I remember correct: Honda, Beta and Yamaha). I shared some chocolate bars with em and explained them from where I came and where I was going to go. Also, my black beauty was part of the talk and impressed the young ones with its high mileage. No matter how nice the talk was, I had a lot of mileage ahead of me, so I went of. The three …

dirt bike riders flanked us with their unplated enduros til the next tarmac road was reached. There we wished farewell and our ride following TET Corsica continued. We …

went deeper into the sparsely populated mountain area of Corsica.

Again we followed a trail which changed from nice gravel, into a steep and …

less maintained rocky track.

Also some easy parts along some meadows where on the schedule. Watching to the mountain peak on the right-hand side of this picture, I remembered the words from one of the hunters, which helped me this day’s morning to push a fallen tree aside. He warned me, that it was likely that snow is incoming to Corsica these days. The cloud covered peaks proofed that assumption. After thinking about my options I decided for this days evening to find shelter in less high regions on the eastern side of the island, because wind and bad weather obviously came from the west. Beeing on my own my moto was: “Safety first!”, and the plan for the rest of the day was made.

Чернотa and I …

stopped another lookout …

for enjoying the breathtaking view. This Island is way bigger than it looks on the map!

I was just taking this picture of a stylish power line, when I noticed three dark points in the sky. Viewing more precisely, it showed out, that three Hawks fought a dogfight with breathtaking maneuvers for a piece of prey. Dreamily I watched the spectacle til the hawks disappeared behind a hill.

I enjoyed it very much cornering Чернотa with a wide open throttle along good maintained tarmac roads through this abandoned area.

Besides donkeys Corsica is well known …

for the huge amount of wild running pigs in nearly each corner of the Island.

The ride followed the mountain range on its feet at the eastern side of the Island along …

countless bridges …

tiny villages …

deeper into the mountains.

The vegetation changed again. Likewise …

did the …

*rainbow alert!*

impressive landscape along our ride …

to …

the lower central areas …

at the eastern half of the island. It already got late so I started my search for a nice camping spot. On the search …

this huge water bladder/reservoir was found in a dead end track near a stone pit. I have never seen such a thing before. Somehow it seemed whispering to me: “Tom, put out your knife out and scratch my big fat belly!”

Being no criminal, I didn’t.

Instead, I found …

near this single abandoned house atop the river bed of river Le Travignano a proper place for shelter.

This evenening it was noodle time, so the first thing I did was …

to put some noodles on the stove. While they cooked I built up the tent, what is a job of twenty minutes.

When that was done, the noodles also were done. I rinsed the noodle water and put the noodles aside. After that I peeled and cut an onion …

Some noodles, a can of tuna, basil pesto and one onion is everything you need for a proper adventure pasta.

… and

fried it in olive oil till they were glassy, what happened quick. The last step for completing the pasta sauce was to …

put the canned tuna and basil pesto into the pot and mince it. When everything was heated up I just had to add the already cooked noodles.

You don’t need much for reaching satisfaction: Just a trusty bike, something to eat and a place to sleep.

Etvoila, spiced up with salt and pepper, the dinner was finally served. I really like such simple recipes and prefer them rather than those expensive “adventurous – space food – instant meals”. This recipe is surely one of my favorite noodle dish when being out with the bike. While munching the noodles, exactly this menu remembered me to another already ridden adventure.

When I was done with this huge portion, a Corsican hunters man came along with his little car and parked nearby in a field. He put a shotgun out of his car, came to me and asked me, after look at the bikes number plate, in very bad spoken English about for how long I will stay here. I told him just this night. He said that this will be ok and added the question if I need some kind of bird meat for breakfast. First I didn’t understand, but when I did, I had laughed loud and told him that there is no need for that on my behalf. Then he wished me a nice evening and disappeared in the nearby reed belt. Just a few minutes later, when I was ready with doing the washing up, I heard two quickly following gun shots. Recently after the hunter came back to his car, holding three dove sized birds on a thread in his hand. I gave him a thumb up sign. He grinned back and left with his car.

I went to the swampy river for a quick wash and read on in my book. With dusk some fresh wind came down along the mountain range and urged me into the tent. After this impressive first day along the TET Corsica my body was tired and I faded away quickly.

Total mileage along this 6th day of the COVID DETOUR 2020: 280 km or 175 miles.

Servus,
Tom


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