Mare e Monti Sud - Stage 4

This stage is relatively straight forward. Leaving the hotel Belvedère you walk back towards the village of Coti-Chiavari and then climb towards the Bocca di a Serra (at 587 meters). From there, you walk over the hilltop for a few hours, on rather flat terrain. After about 2 hours you get to Bocca di Gradellu where the path crosses the regional road D55. There is a small cafe there, where you could have a drink or a meal. A nice place for lunch!

Continue towards the north and still on the hilltop, towards the next waypoint called Monte Tignoso (at 635 meters). There you'll have another nice view of the bay of Ajaccio. The next stop is the Monte Canarellu (at 630 meters), and then you cross the plateau near the village of Pruno.

The last village before the end of this stage is Pietrosella (at 500 meters), and from there it's the final climb towards the gite in Bisinao at 632 meters.

When we were here in April of 1998, the weather was terrible, in fact it was so bad that we had to decide not to walk. There was a heavy storm, heavy rain and thunderstorms. It was just to dangerous. The owner of the hotel in Coti-Chiavari called a taxi for us, but because it had to come all the way from Ajaccio, it could only be there at 2.30pm. The staff at the hotel took pity and kept bringing us coffee, cappucinos, cookies and bread.

The drive in the taxi was an eventful one as well. The driver clearly was in a hurry, because she drove from Coti-Chiavari to Bisinao in less than one hour (and you have to remember that we had to travel around the mountains instead of walking over them. Shaken and stirred and a bit sick we got out of the taxi at the gite in Bisinao. We arrived at 3.30pm and still had a long afternoon ahead of us. There was nothing to do there and it kept raining. The owner of the gite made it all seem pleasant after all by serving a wonderful meal, with coffee and drinks afterwards.