Cycling in South France?

[GuinnessMK]

Anyone been to the very south of France? I'm off on holiday there on Monday, just north of Antibes / Nice.

Planning on a trip up to the Verdon Gorge etc at some point.

Basically, what I want to know is, is it worth me taking the mountain bikes (for me, SWIMBO and Ben) or should we just hire some when we get there?

Last year we had a great holiday in Devon, cycling along disused railway lines. However this year I'm a bit concerned that the hills will be more like a mountain stage on the Tour d'France.

If the cycling is good, we'd probably ride every other day, if it's too hilly we'll just have dragged the bikes down for no reason?

Cheers

Mike

[Stedman]

Do you mean, take the mountain bikes+ride down the mountain. OR. Take mountain bikes and road ride? Silly question maybe

[Minnsy]

We stayed in a village called Le Broc, about 20km from Nice,, straight up the valley heading North, It is fantastic cycling country around there, although I only did the road bit. Met a few MTBers and they seemed pretty impressed with the terrain... it is hilly, but I managed all the roads on a ropey old hybrid I found in the garage of the house I was staying at.

Couple of points, the french love cycling, you get treated like a king on the road - cars, lorries, buses give you so much room... and the french come out on their very smart roadies early in the mornings and power up the hills...

Wish I was going back this year!

[prand]

hills north of Nice & Cannes are the "Alpes Maritimes" and are very big hills! Lance Armstrong did a lot of his comeback training in this area - long 10km climbs to 1500m will be teh order of the day.

[PJLarge]

Yep, it's awesome. I was down there in Oct last year, we stayed just outside Saint Tropez and did the whole coast along to Monaco, drove up to Carpentras and did Ventoux on the bike, and also went to Gorges du Verdon but that was in the car and not on the bike. The Gorge is unbelievable but I think it would be a shocker on the bike, in some ways worse then Ventoux. Stunning scenery though.

We were on road bikes, the tarmac there is so smooth - it shows you what a state the UK roads are in. I'd recommend the run from Cannes to Monaco, stick to the route bord du mer (the coastal road), one of the particular highlights is Villefranche - stop for some food down by the port there. Also more back towards Saint Tropez is a place called Port Grimaud, again well worth a look - it's beautiful and there are some seriously well-heeled people there to people watch

The whole area is a lot more hilly than you'd expect, but everything strangely seems much easier there (or at least it did to us but I'm from North Wales and am used to hills). It will be very hot at this time of year, there's a great bike culture over there and you'll see hundreds of cyclists. A lot of them are very quick as well

Good luck, you'll love it.

Phil.