Could it really be a bear living in my Corsican roof?

Corsica has famously been described as “a mountain in the sea”. Certainly it is a much more rugged place than might be gleaned from pictures of its golden beaches. The interior, dominated by a vast range of granite peaks running from the north-west to the south-east, can feel both remote and faintly dangerous, with a temperamental climate to match the island’s volatile political history. There are few more spectacular venues for an electrical storm.

In the northwestern corner, where cliffs tumble straight into the Mediterranean, are the Calanques de Piana, a Unesco World Heritage Site of extraordinary beauty, especially when the rock burns red at sunset. Such is the terrain – and the protection now given to the area – that there are few places to stay in the Calanques, though such is its appeal to tourists that the road running through is rarely free of bus tours in summer. Still, when you’re staying in the only house there (a converted acorn mill), passing coaches are only a minor irritant.

So were the scorpions. I had been surprised to encounter the first one, which I found sitting nonchalantly in the shower. The second, waiting for us just inside the front door when we arrived back from a trip to the nearby village, was bigger – but no longer had novelty value. More annoying was whatever was living in the roof, which woke up every evening at around the same time we went to bed. Could it be a bear? I was convinced, despite being told firmly by my wife that there were no bears in Corsica. After all, we hadn’t expected the scorpions.

Bear or no bear, the shuffling and snuffling above our heads created sub-optimal conditions for good sleep. Then again, we hardly expended much energy in the daytime, chasing shade and gazing at the landscape being our primary pastimes. A nearby hill had caught my eye from the outset. Just over the stream which had once driven our mill but which was now barely a dribble, it was a gentle incline compared to the monsters behind the house. Its sides were rocky and covered with a mass of low-lying shrubs, including fragrant myrtle berry.

After spending five days plotting possible routes up its broad flank, I finally decided to brave the heat and aim for the peak. There would, I figured, be glorious views of the sea from the top. I set off alone, leaving my wife to a book.

Reaching the foot of the hill was easy enough but, as can so often happen, when I got there things looked different – steeper for a start, with no obvious pathways; indeed no pathway at all. The routes that had looked so obvious from half a kilometre away had vanished.

Even so, the going wasn’t difficult, even in trainers and I made fairly steady progress between the rocks and the undergrowth.

Then I suddenly thought about the scorpions. And the bear. And then I began to wonder whether there were snakes on the island and whether they might be attracted to sun-baked granite and scrubby evergreens. I was, I knew, a long way from the top. And there was no snake anti-venom on tap in the Calanques. And anyway, what the hell was I doing halfway up a Coriscan hill all alone in the middle of my honeymoon?

So, I never saw the view. But nor did I get bitten by snake or mauled by a bear. Was retreat the right decision? Of course.