Thursday 19 September 2019. Two days previously we had flown from Manchester out to Palma, Majorca to board once again our favourite ship, the Marella Dream.
She may be small compared to the current fad for floating cities, but if you meet someone whose company you enjoy, you do have a chance of bumping into them again on her. And she can visit ports that simply cannot cope with the huge (dare I say ghastly?) goliaths that roam the seas, turning everywhere they visit into a crowded mass of people.
Which is precisely the inspiration for the cruise we are on. Hidden Gems will take us across the western Mediterranean, calling at smaller ports where passengers can step off on their own to explore beaches and towns off the beaten track. Alternatively there are excursion tours to the larger popular sites if you so wish.
Today, after a day at sea, we have arrived in Propriano on the island of Corsica and we have opted to explore this place that until we booked the cruise, I confess, we had never heard of.
The Dream is moored alongside a marina and we walk the length of it, coming to a point where the road heads off up a hill. There's a beach before us and further on another which leads to an interesting rocky promontory.
We climb the hill and look back towards the marina and Dream - that's Dream with a capital D, we didn't take a nap or anything...
Halfway up we pass a set of steps leading to a building. Neither the steps nor the building seem to have been used for a long while!
We reach the main road and carry on in the same direction in order to reach the far beach. Propriano lies on the route from Ajaccio to Bonfaco. We have visited Ajaccio a few times in the past, it is the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte.
We reached the far beach and as the ancient and unpracticed legs were demanding a rest, we sat for a while; Fran on a bench, but me on the hard wall in order to have a viewpoint that would let me sketch the scene.
To the right, the land rose up towards a cemetery on top of the hill, but to the immediate right was a car park, not particularly attractive and hellish to draw convincingly, so I turned it into scrubland with a gleeful disregard for fact and accuracy. And I don't care...!
This took the best part of an hour and whilst the legs were now rested, certain other parts which were resting on unyielding hard stone were calling for me to get up again. We kept to the road, this time and walked down into the town.
Once there a rather more comfortable seat gave us a place to sit and have a drink whilst watching the passers by. This did make Miss Franny a bit uncomfortable at times as the road was fairly narrow and a couple of cars turning into the road at her side came very close to the railing, having to slam on brakes and reverse to try again. One woman took four goes at it...
So what can I say about Propriano itself? Well it has ancient roots going back to the Romans and the Greeks. It was invaded in both the 5th century by the Vandals and the 8th century by Saracens. Filitosa, 8km north and Palaghju, 11 km south have some standing stones from prehistoric times; Palaghju having the largest number of stones of any site in the Mediterranean.
The first day onboard the ship I found that my shaving brush was rapidly trying to emulate my head and was shedding bristles at an alarming rate. However visits to the local pharmacies failed to produce a replacement, so I was forced to spend at least another day lifting out the click-clack plug to scrape out bunches of badger hair before they blocked the plumbing!
Ah yes - I have a bit of a thing for decorative street lighting. So much so that there will probably be a collective article of them at some point in the future. Here is Propriano's entry to the lamp post hall of fame...
Finally, we are thrilled to be cruising with long-standing friends and entertainers, Tomas and Maris, who sing every night in the Tides Bar onboard Marella Dream. I played a couple of songs with them every night, so that the audience could see just how good they were... My favourite sort of audience - tolerant!
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