"Cannot afford to slip"

Day 6. Stage 5, Stage 6 and Paglia Orba...: Bergeries de Vallone - Castel de Vergio

Another late night last night - Ben and I planned to climb Paglia Orba after today's stage - putting us a day behind Tim, Paddy, Mark and Joey who elected to miss the mountain, and walk the next two stages in one day - a real shame, as they have all been brilliant company so far!

As per usual, they all set off before dawn, leaving me and Ben to set off at the apparently lazy time of 6am!

After three hours of climbing around 500m, we came out on to a ridge known as the Bocca di Foggiale, and found the other four sat at the top resting tired legs. Ben and I were surprisingly fresh at this point, and so we started to concoct a plan...

Would it be possible to walk a stage of the GR20, go off route to climb the third highest mountain on the island, and THEN rejoin the standard trek and complete a second stage through the intense heat of a Corsican August afternoon?

We decided to find out...

Now, this mountain got a mention in our guide book. It simply said:

"Paglia Orba has some of the best scrambling in Corsica. But you simply cannot afford to slip".

No kidding.

Todays blip is taken on the way down the mountain, as neither Ben or I were able to take our hands off the rock to reach our cameras on the way up!

The photo shows me coming down near the summit. Below me is a ledge around 2-3 feet wide. Next to that, is a drop right down to the valley floor 600m-1km below us...

You simply could not afford to slip.

On our way down, we found 6 people who had stopped and decided to to turn around in the face of 10m scrambling rock faces, with nothing but fresh air behind and below them! Not that we're anti-social, but it was quite nice having the summit to our selves - to be honest, we both thrived on the challenge!

Back at our bags, we stopped to reassess our situation - neither of us expected that mountain to be so hard or dangerous, but a thought had occurred to us both on the way down... "Walk through the afternoon and get a whole day at the beach on the south coast!"

Decision made, we shouldered our packs and headed off down the valley, past dozens of deep rock pools which we were sorely tempted to stop at. But by now, Ben and I were both in sunburnt "head-down-just-don't-stop" mode, so we pressed on to the days final refuge; another ski lodge: The Hotel Castel di Vergio.

That night, sat outside my tent staring back up the valley to Paglia Orba, and thinking of the 15 miles we'd covered, I feil asleep by 8 and didn't wake until the sun came up...