After a 17 minute downhill cruise from the aforementioned peak (so unfair…17 minutes of bliss to counter 120 minutes of pain…) we made our second swim stop at a gorgeous little seaside village called Tiuccia. The requisite turquoise waters, friendly little fish nibbling at our knees…sigh. Ridiculous, I tell you. No time for lounging around in turquoise waters! Onwards and (of course) upwards to our next stop, Cargese.

We arrived in good time to our only ‘hotel’ stop on the trip – Hotel Continental. Zero points for originality in naming the place but a million points for the view. So, so beautiful. My words certainly can’t do justice, and the photographs might try. I don’t want to overuse turquoise or crystal or blue or magnificent so I won’t use any of those words, but it was the opposite of unpicturesque, drab, depressing and de-energising. Now that I’ve succeeded in providing the worst description of a sublime landscape, may I direct you to the image, below, taken inside what appeared to be a derelict house, open to the public to peruse and somehow purchase an array of wholly undesirable objects? A little odd, but strangely fascinating.

A genuine highlight was the Greek Orthodox Church, which, unlike the Roman Catholic Church (positioned in a face-off on either side of the town’s hillsides) was beautifully and ornately decorated with iconography that was, while typical of the Greek Orthodox religion, more nuanced than is often so. The Catholic Church seemed somewhat clumsily adorned in comparison.