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‘Putain, c’est splendide’, I hear drifting on the wind as we dive into a wild, untamed bay. Cap Corse — a slender finger of land in northern Corsica — looks like it has wandered out of the tropics, lost in the Mediterranean.   Cliffs soar from the sea like majestic giants. Waves of azure blue water crash in wild rhythm, leaving white foam along the shore.

Today, tropical means wet, wind, and the raw beauty of a storm-stirred coast.

This is day 1 of the Corsica Cyclo GT20 (*). Morning breaks under a dark, brooding sky. 200 riders (among them Philip Posen , Gunther Aerts and I) gather on the square in Erbalunga, rain jackets zipped. Bernard Hinault steps forward to speak. This time, I’m determined to show my respect — and while I’m at it, a quick selfie won’t hurt.  
It stays dry longer than expected. But right at 11:30 — our scheduled departure, of course — the drash national begins, as if on cue. Within minutes, I’m soaked to the skin, my glasses fogged, my rims blackened by brake dust grinding.  
The first 25 kilometers roll gently along the eastern edge of Cap Corse — flat to softly undulating, the sea never far from sight. Incredibly, though, we are forced to ride the entire stretch behind escort motorbikes that throttle the pace to a crawl — sometimes barely 15 km/h. We’re constantly on the brakes.

At kilometer 25, the race starts. The peloton is brought to a halt — then released. The timed segment spans 12 kilometers: a crossing from east to west over the 🏔️COL DE LA SERRA. One of those unmistakably Corsican climbs, with easy and steady grades between 3% and 7%, winding through the hills.  
I start far back — a mental trick, hoping that overtaking others will give me wings. But perhaps it is not the wisest choice; I spend too long alone until I can finally reach riders at my level. 

I finish the col segment 111th out of 168, clocking 29:46 — an average of 22.5 km/h. But what matters more: the legs feel strong, and at the summit… it’s summer time! Well — not quite summer. The wind is fierce, but the sun is out and the sky is blue.  
At sweeping views of the bay, French ex-pro Audrey Cordon-Ragot 💙🤍❤️  poses beside her gleaming S-Works. When she swings onto the saddle and dives into the descent, I sprint after her. How often do you get to ride in the slipstream of a two-time French road champion?  
She can descend alright. Especially out of the corners — explosive power. No surprise, really — Cordon-Ragot is also a seven-time French time trial champion.  And then — there they are. The western cliffs of Cap Corse, wild and cinematic, rising like broken teeth from the sea. It was here someone had sighed ‘putain, c’est splendide’.

I latch onto a group of local Corsican riders. Church towers and old tiled roofs peek through an explosion of green that spills all the way down to the shoreline. The road winds like ribbon along the cliffside — a breathtaking thread stitched into the flanks of the mountains, through the mountains, and overlooking dizzying abysses. 

The road has real climbs, some stretching six kilometers long. And the descents? Ah — just look at the photos. They say more than I ever could.  During the six climbs, the western wind is rising fierce from the Tyrrhenian Sea and slamming against the cliffs. It strikes us from the side, so forcefully I must sometimes rush to keep my balance.  
At the start of the fourth ascent, a vision rises on the horizon—dreadful, yet achingly beautiful. While we still ride beneath a calm blue sky, ahead the sky had turned coal-dark, veiled in a pale white mist—rain, no doubt. The storm takes form, ominous and majestic, just as the cape begins to reveal its edge.

But the storm gods spare no one, as with the dawn of the day, so with the dusk. For fifteen long minutes, the heavens tear open and the roads become rivers. The storm crashes over the rugged coast. It’s a mighty theatre, nature unleashed.

In San Fiorenzu, a meal awaits—couscous with salad, bread, a slice of cake.

This town is cradled in magnificence: where the 50-kilometer peninsula ends and the rest of Corsica begins, a bay has been carved. There lies San Fiorenzu, tucked like a secret pearl. Behind its quiet marina, the mountains rise in brilliant green, layered ridge upon ridge. And the sun is out in full glory once again.

Rain storms bring with them so much more hassle. Half an hour of cleaning the bike—making sure the chain is spotless above all... But it all adds an extra tick to the heroic nature of it all. And tomorrow, the bike—and we—will be ready again for stage two.

(*) The Corsica Cyclo GT20 (Grande Traversée, or in Corsican: Traversata Maio) is a tourist cycling route divided into 12 stages. The Cyclo event turns it into a 5-stage race, with each stage featuring a timed segment, and the final stage being timed in its entirety.

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Pieter Stockmans

Corsica 🇫🇷 Cyclo GT20 1️⃣ Erbalunga-San Fiurenzu (Cap Corse)

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