Derekthered's Corsica blog

It's time to stop dreaming about places like the one on the left (Lavezzi) and get on with planning our next visit. A letter from our copropriété arrived a day or two ago, enclosing the agenda for a meeting on 27th March, so over the past 48 hours I've been planning our next visit to Corsica whilst struggling to free myself from a horrid stomach virus.

The aero-landscape has been transformed since we left Calvi last autumn. Excel Airways has gone bust, the flights available from Thomsons have been cut back, and easyjet has opened a new route between Paris and Bastia. So, later this month, before the direct routes start for the summer, we'll be trying a new way of getting to our favourite island. I'm not sure if we'll manage to get any snorkelling done this time (March is still a bit cold even for me) but I expect we'll manage a couple of decent walks.

From our home near Southampton, we'll fly with Flybe to Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, swap terminals there and fly onward to Bastia with Easyjet where we'll pick up our hire car. You can be sure I'll let you know how we get on, and if you want to look at a few options yourself, you can check them out here.

Usually at this time we fly to Nice or Pisa, then get a ferry to Calvi or Bastia. But as we'll be there for such a short time (just five days) we're flying all the way on this occasion. In years past, the problem with swapping planes at Paris has been that one needed to take the onward flight from Paris's other, more southerly airport, at Orly. It will be interesting to see how much time and stress we save by cutting out that uncertain inter-plane dash in the navette along Paris's infamous périférique.