Corsica: Odd

I have posted another photo of this particular tree up on here previously (only to be asked if it was to be entitled 'self portrait'). However, when you spot a tree which is a genuinely weird as this, it's worth stopping the car, taking a photo and posting it twice!

Corsican plumbing seems to be a bit of a disaster area as far as I can tell. Our apartment looked to have all the plumbing that one could wish for - except that the kitchen sink burped and gurgled day and night and the drains sometimes blocked completely. Fortunately the owner of the apartments, Mdme Storai, lived next door to them and she seemed to be a dab-hand with the drain-rods, and every time they blocked up she cheerfully lifted the manhole cover and rodded then out for us all.

Apparently when one plumbs in a shower in Corsica, one does not sense the normal obligation to build the thing from parts which match in any way. The shower we had, didn't slot into its wall-bracket at all. The photo above is of our make-shift DIY shower head bracket. Not pretty, but effective.

We had heard about the dodgy plumbing before we went, what we had not been made aware of was that the electrical wiring was of a similar standard. One night whilst I was cooking the tea, we kept getting power-cuts. Eventually the owner knocked on the door, looked in and saw all our food simmering and frying away on the four cooker rings. "Quatre!!" "Quatre?!!!" she cried in abject horror and complete disbelief. Apparently you are supposed to know that if you use more than two rings on the hob, the power to the whole block would disintegrate!

The Corsicans love their charcuterie, which is something of a national dish. And here is some, wild, alive, kicking and holding up the traffic on the road to the Col de Bavella.

This village has one main road through it. It is a very narrow road, which is not wide enough for two lots of cars to pass each other. Very sensibly therefore they have installed traffic-lights at each end of the village to ensure that cars do not meet each other in the centre of the village and cause gridlock.

This all works very well, until a bus takes so long getting up the hill that it fails to clear the one-way section before the lights at the top of the village turn green, allowing traffic from the other end to pour into the narrow road.

We watched exactly this happen and sat for 40 minutes completely stationary enjoying the view, the heat, the wasted time and the ensuing pandemonium. Best of all the coach driver at the front of the queue coming up the hill, had a punch-up with the lorry driver at the head of the traffic coming down the hill. Lots of yelling, arms waving and gesticulating exploded into violence, and the passengers separated the two angry drivers.

Much better than T.V.!