The outer islands

Most visitors know Budelli and Spargi. Fewer reach the north-eastern islands: Santo Stefano, Santa Maria, Razzoli. Yet these - more distant, less serviced, often excluded from standard tours - give the archipelago its true scale. They are not beach islands: they are navigation, history, and silence islands.

Reaching them from La Maddalena requires a boat, wind awareness, and willingness not to know exactly where your day will end. Exactly for this reason, those who get there do not forget it.

Santo Stefano lies between La Maddalena and Sardinia's coast, about one kilometre from the main harbour. For decades it hosted a US military base within NATO - installations, bunkers, communication structures - decommissioned in 2008. Buildings are still visible from water, partly covered by regrown vegetation: a historical layering that gives this island a character unlike the others. Not only granite and scrub: granite, scrub, and 20th-century geopolitics.

The channel between La Maddalena and Santo Stefano is one of the archipelago's busiest passages: ferries, sailing boats, and RIBs cross in a narrow stretch with strong current, especially under Mistral. Here you understand that the archipelago is not "quiet" in the tourist sense: it is a functioning place, with a sea that has its own direction and force.

Santa Maria is the gate to the outer islands. Passo degli Asinelli - the channel between Santa Maria and Razzoli - is one of the most spectacular stretches in the whole archipelago: when crossing by boat, Corsica is already close enough to distinguish houses on the French coast. Waters in the pass are transparent and restless; this is not an anchoring spot, it is a crossing to handle carefully.

Santa Maria's north-west beach is white, with shallow seabed and sand changing tone with wind and hour. It is almost always empty outside organised tours. Arriving by your own or rented boat means having it completely - and understanding what a place feels like before being optimised for tourism.

Razzoli is the last island before Corsica. The historic lighthouse on its highest point - visible from French mainland on clear days - marks the northern edge of the National Park, where Italian waters meet French waters. The island is not permanently inhabited: no services, no organised dock, only rock, Mediterranean scrub, and wind changing frequency between boulders.

You reach it only by sea. Stopping in the south-east bay requires long scope and wind reading. It is not for everyone - and it does not try to be. It is the kind of place that still exists precisely because it is not convenient.

Navigating from La Maddalena toward Razzoli means understanding the archipelago in full scale. You pass near Budelli, skim Santa Maria's eastern side, and enter Passo degli Asinelli with Corsica less than ten nautical miles away. The National Park ends here - or rather where Italian jurisdictional waters end. Beyond begins the French side of the International Marine Park of the Strait of Bonifacio: one ecological continuum that borders cannot interrupt.