What makes Corsica the underdog in European naturism?

We remember how much we were blown away when we first visited Corsica. The island had never really been on our radar. Because, honestly, how good could it really be? We know this sounds pretty ignorant, but at the time, we had travelled to islands in the Caribbean and Thailand, the ones you see in advertising in airports. And we had been to some Spanish islands like Ibiza and the Canaries. How could an island of France (that’s not in the Caribbean) beat any of that?

The first time we ended up in Corsica wasn’t even purely by choice. We had a collaboration with France4Naturisme, and one of their resorts happened to be on the island. It’s fair to say that if Riva Bella had not been on Corsica, neither had we. We planned to stay four days in the resort and booked our ferries five days in between. One day extra, but not because we had any intention to check out more of the island. Our ferry back to the mainland was leaving early in the morning, and we just wanted to extend our sleeping time by staying a night near the port.

When we eventually arrived on Corsica, it took us less than a day to fall in love with the island. The views during the one-hour drive to the resort were spectacular, the food and wine scene was extraordinary, and we even appreciated the grumpy character of the Corsicans. Riva Bella resort was a charm, and we found out that there are more naturist resorts on the island that we hadn’t even heard about. And apparently, quite a few great nude beaches too. All we could think was: “Only 5 days… what have we done?”

Meanwhile, we’ve gone back to Corsica quite a few times. We visited the three large coastal resorts Riva Bella, Bagheera, and La Chiappa, and the wild inland resort U Furu. We’ve seen most of the nude beaches, as well as some beautiful inland places. And as soon as we find another good reason to go back, or make ourselves believe we just found one, we will once again be on that ferry.

When we were putting together a video about Corsica’s naturist resorts the other day, all those memories about our first time in Corsica came back. We wondered what had made us overlook this island for so long. Why is it not in the same list as Ibiza, Tenerife or Mykonos? The answer isn’t romantic, though. It’s mostly logistics.

What makes Corsica different from the other European islands we just mentioned is that the others all have large international airports. More importantly, these airports are heavily served by Ryanair, Europe’s most popular low-cost airline. We just double checked, and it’s only possible to get to Corsica with Ryanair from two European cities: Paris (duh) and Brussels (ironically, our own local airport, as we are from Belgium).

This means that for most Europeans, flying to Corsica is complicated and expensive. The other option is taking a ferry from either Marseille (FR), Toulon (FR), Nice (FR), Genoa (IT), or Livorno (IT). These ferry crossings take several hours, up to nine in the case of Marseille, and they are not cheap. Also, you’d better come with your own transportation, or you’ll be looking at some pretty expensive taxi rides, or you’ll need to rent a car locally.

It’s all quite a hassle. Add this to the ignorance of thinking that a French island could never be very spectacular, and we get pretty close to the reason why we’ve been overlooking Corsica for so long. But there’s another one.

Our Google Maps has a lot of naturist resorts pinned by default. So whenever we need to look for directions to drive to Marseille or Toulon, where we usually take the ferry, we also get a good view of all the other naturist resorts we’ll be passing by along the way. And we can tell you, there are many. France is the queen of naturist resorts, and when they all look at you from your Google map, it’s hard to justify a nine-hour crossing when there’s a perfectly good naturist resort two hours down the road.

Why would we bother travelling that far when there are all these cool places much closer by? Today, we have a clear answer (Because it’s CORSICA!), But for the longest time, we just ended up choosing other resorts instead. Those that don’t require a long ferry ride.

It’s not a coincidence, by the way, that Corsica is particularly popular among Germans. They don’t have to pass through France to get there.

When we talk with others about naturist travels in Europe, we often find the same ignorance we had years ago. People just don’t know. And not just naturism-wise, Corsica is not just a naturist underdog, it’s a general tourism underdog.

Yet, we found one group of people for whom Corsica is extremely popular: Those who have already been to the island before. Like ourselves. Corsica has its way of making you want to come back, making you want to explore more of the island. And thanks to its naturist resorts and nude beaches, also for the naked traveller, there’s always a bit more to explore.

Maybe one day, Corsica will become a mainstream holiday destination. Maybe suddenly Ryanair will decide to fly to Corsica from every corner of Europe. Maybe Corsica will appear on every naturist’s bucket list. So here’s our recommendation: Enjoy it while it’s still an underdog, just don’t wait as long as we did.