Every night in Porticcio, after finishing dinner at the beach-front restaurants, we’d watch the sun set over the other side of the Gulf of Ajaccio, behind the Sanguinaire Islands.
Earlier in the week, we’d briefly visited the beach at Capo di Feno – a large beach out in the countryside about 30-minutes’ drive from Ajaccio centre, which faces directly west and is the other side of the Sanguinaire Isles from Ajaccio, right where we’d been watching the sun set from the other side of the bay.
We’d decided to come back here one evening and watch the sunset from here, taking a picnic with us to eat on the beach while the sun set.
We arrived about 6pm – there’s a very large, free car park which was starting to empty as most of the other visitors packed up from their days on the beach.
Several other people had the same idea as us and were hanging around later in to the evening but the vast majority of people had gone, leaving the beach almost completely empty as we sat and ate our sandwiches.
It was still warm and we swam in the warm sea and laid on the sand while the sun began to set over the horizon in front of us.
By about 8.30pm (at the end of July), the sun dropped down to the horizon, the sky turning all different colours of pink, gold and red – of which from here, we had the most perfect, uninterrupted view.
Other families on the beach were taking photos and people were swapping cameras, offering to take shots of each other silhouetted against the stunning sky.
Once the sun had disappeared and it began to get dark, we packed up and left – around 9.15pm or so.
Plage Capo di Feno is a different type of beach from many of the others around Ajaccio. It’s in quite a remote area, with no surrounding buildings – just green hillsides and forests. It’s a bit more exposed than some of the other more sheltered beaches, making it popular with surfers – although there was very little wind or waves on the calm, warm evening we were here.
It’s well worth visiting if you can – and we would definitely recommend hanging around for the end of the day and sunset, which was such a simple way to spend the evening, but definitely one of the highlights of the holiday.
Getting there
There’s a large, free car park with plenty of space even on busy days (the evenings aren’t busy) – although it’s a pretty bumpy off-road track you need to drive down in order to get there. Find it on Google Maps here: https://goo.gl/maps/kZV7jDqWMA52