Sailing south-east from the glamour of the Côte d’Azur – the glittering trio of Nice, Cannes and St Tropez – the Star Clipper leaves one of France’s richest departments for a rugged, rural island. The four-masted Star Clipper, a nautical tribute to the golden age of sail, slices through the Mediterranean as we approach Corsica. Rising out of the sea, the island is a green-fringed mountain range that runs from north-west to south-east.

Four ports of call on Corsica and a beach morning are at the heart of our seven nights aboard the ship. A further hotel night in Nice and one in Rome make up Riviera.’s nine-night trip.

The Ile de Rousse

There is certainly a red tinge to the rocks as we moor but the Ile is no longer an island. Napoleon decreed, more than two centuries ago, that a causeway should be built.

Nor is Napoleon a hero in Ile de Rousse. Pasquale Paoli is the statue on the plinth in Ile de Rousse’s main square. When Napoleon brought French forces back to the island of his birth, Paoli led the Corsican resistance. His victories gave Corsica a brief two-year taste of independence.

Paoli wrote Europe’s first democratic constitution to be voted into place. It gave women the vote long before they were so empowered in France. Paoli’s fame spread and a handful of towns were named after him in the newly independent USA.

Into the peaks

Leaving the azure waters of Ile de Rousse’s harbour, our coach tour climbs and winds into Corsica’s rocky interior. Although Corsica is only 112 miles long and 52 miles wide, it has vertebrae of 117 peaks over 7,000 feet tall. Mount Cinto, an extinct…

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