Dieppe to Nice - Part Five

Saturday 21st August

This was going to be my last day as a cycle tourist, which I actually felt quite relieved about. Riding around with 10kg extra on your bike is quite tiring. Roads that you think you can ride along very easily suddenly become twice as difficult. For example earlier in the week I’d ridden up the col du Lautaret and I it was really tough work even though I’d ridden up it times before, and even up steeper climbs before without really getting any problems. But when I rode the col du Lautaret I was so tired and out of it and in a way I think that it was good that I didn’t do any of the other classic climbs such as col d’Izoard or col de la Bonnette. So today was going to be my last day. From what I could see it didn’t look like the road would be too difficult. In fact everyone had talked about this famous Route Napolean and it would be just downhill from here to the sea, near to Nice. Just downhill all the way and I’d love it. The road would twist and turn, great stuff. So I was looking forward to it but I was still taking with the a pinch of salt the fact that I’d be descending the whole way – for all of 80 miles? Not sure I believed that! I knew that there’d be at least one or two climbs.
So I set off, and the other great thing was the weather! It was hot. It was even pretty hot! At that time of the morning, at 9 o’clock, it was 22 degrees.

So I set off from Digne les Bains, knowing I’d be in for a long day. I wasn’t really sure if I’d ride all the way to Nice or if I’d just go to Grasse and get a train or to St Laurent du Var and get a train. I wasn’t 100% sure, but I just decided to keep pressing on as far as I could and just keep riding.

Saturday was a day of contrasts compared with Friday. Friday had been very rainy, where Saturday was very sunny. Friday was a day where I hardly did any mileage. I probably only did about 15 miles in total. Saturday was going to be the longest day in the saddle. On Friday the proprietor of the hotel I stayed in was ok but she was abit frosty and the meals she served were very lean. I felt sorry for some of the guests. They looked skinny. My meal was abit small but some of the burly big guys with probably a much bigger appetite than me were served meagre portions of rice and endives for dinner. Breakfast had been an even more measly affair. But the place where I was on Saturday, the Hotel Provence at Digne les Bains served a very generous breakfast. There was lots of bread, ham, cheese and cereal, fruit and yoghurt. He even laid on more food for me because he knew I was cycle touring and he was very impressed with it. He wanted me to be nicely set up on my way. He was very friendly and it is definitely a hotel I’d recommend to others. In fact he was quite excited to hear that I would be passing through the place where he was originally from – a town called greolieres, in the Alpes Maritimes.

So I set off. The ride certainly was not down hill to start with. There were a couple of minor cols to do, including one that was very dramatic that went round a gorge and through little stony tunnels. It was very hot too. Funnily enough I felt ok. My back didn’t hurt at all, probably because the gradients were never severe. They were always shallow gradients that could be ridden just by twiddling without even needing to get out of the saddle. I didn’t feel any pull on my back.

I actually spent quite a lot of time on the N85 road which is known as the Route Napoleon. It’s quite a well known road. As I cyclist I enjoyed it, and I think motorbikers seemed to enjoy it even more. It’s a road that twists around lots of gorges and mountains in the Alpes de Haute Provence region. The road was not too busy and there was wall to wall sunshine the whole time on this very hot day.

So my ride into Nice was very hot. It was a very hot day, with probably more climbing than anticipated. Nothing too strenuous but it was by no means downhill all the way as people had told me. It would have been nicer if I didn’t have to do a series of mini calls. To help me on my way I stopped at that well known tourist attraction at Castellane – no, not the Gorges du Verdon but the Casino supermarket where there were lots of people gathered! There I was able to get lots of supplies and keep myself well stocked up for the journey, especially with my favourite energy source for that week, a French brand of almond biscuits and Coca Cola! So I passed through Castellane, which is a place that Aodan and I should have passed through. But we didn’t pass through because I’d made an executive decision to not spend the weekend at the Gorges du Verdon but to just stay in Nice and ride around free of panniers or cycle touring bits and pieces. I did make a point, as I passed through Castellane of checking out what I would have missed. I have to admit that it is a very nice town and was incredibly touristic with people there from all over Europe. They’d all come down specially to see the Canyon du Verdon. And if Castellane was busy I can only imagine Moustiers Ste Marie must have been ten times busier because that’s right in the heart of the Gorges. In a way I don’t know if I was that disappointed to miss out on all the crowds and the tourists, but I imagine the actual sites of the canyon and the gorge would have been quite spectacular. Sadly I wasn’t going to see that this weekend, so it’s still something to do for another day.

My ride continued on past a number of small villages and after a series of descents I left the Route Napoleon and I headed out towards Greolieres and Tourenc, which are places that have actual ski resorts. I’m not sure exactly how big they are but they were all being advertised as open so I imagine they were being used for mountain biking or walking. I didn’t go into the resorts – I just rode past them and I just stayed on the main road through that area. I was reasonably familiar with this area because that’s where I’d been on a previous occasion to ride La Vencoise cyclosportive, so I felt like I was in familiar territory. Also the nice thing was I felt like I was actually in Alpes Maritimes, and therefore not far from Nice. For the first time I began to think, “hey I’m going to ride all the way into Nice.” So I wouldn’t need to catch a train. My map was quite clear. I was going to ride through Greolieres and then go down through the Gorges du Loup and very small villages that would get me into Cagnes sur Mer, then ride in along the sea front. And that’s exactly what I did! The terrain from here on in was very easy. There was barely any climbing at all. It was pan flat with just gently rolling roads. The road surface was good and very straight. It was well sign-posted and very scenic and you could see that there were lots of little farms. I think I went past the Lac du Tourenc where they were holding a car boot sale, something which seems to be quite popular in France these days and after Greolieres I reached probably the best part of the ride, the descent through the Gorges du Loup.

Just outside Greolieres I came to an area, the name of which I can’t remember, which was basically a rocky gorge – a gorge which had loads of rock formations all along with caves that had irregular erosion and it was quite dramatic looking. As well as that there was a massive twisty descent – the sort of road where I had to really had to challenge my braking skills and cars had to toot their horn quite a lot when going through the numerous tunnels. It was a real adrenaline ride to get all the way through and finally arrive in Greolieres and then head towards La Tourette sur Loup and then I was following the Gorges du Loup. Again that was a very dramatic natural feature. You could see that it was a mini canyon with rapid streams and various areas where people stopped for picnics. All this was just within 15 miles of Nice. Again it was very dramatic. I stopped to take photos but it was difficult to get the full perspective. I would really recommend that area from Greolieres to Cagnes sur Mer. I pedalled on. I had kept in touch with Aodan over the course of the day. He had arrived at the hotel at around 2.30pm and had already warned me that Nice was very hot, but the hotel room was very nice and he just needed to catch up on sleep and be out in time to meet me somewhere in Nice – probably along the Promenade des Anglais.

There’s always something quite frustrating about being on the edge of the town and you’ve been riding all day. You know that you are near but it feels so far away. That was the case with Nice.

I wasn’t far from the beach which was a nice feeling and it was just a case of getting through the massive conurbation which is on the edge of Nice. I could smell the sea but I couldn’t see it, which is quite frustrating. It was quite hard to believe that I wasn’t actually that far. I went through various small towns outside Nice, like St Laurent du Var, Cagnes sur Mer and towards Tourettes sur Loup and La Colle sur Loup. Of course I should have realised from the name that this town would involve going up a hill! That was probably the steepest climb of the whole ride. It was quite a steep gradient that went through the whole town and the main street. It was about 15% and not very pleasant, especially as it was unexpected! The main road was quite narrow, and although there was a cycle path I didn’t use it because it was full of crap which could have caused a puncture so I just stayed on the road and held up the traffic as I crawled up on my bike! The thing that reminded me I was in France was that there were loads of pharmacies. There seems to be a chemists shop on every corner. They always display the time and the temperature, and they were showing 35 degrees! Thank god I hadn’t ridden in those temperatures all day! So here I was, having braved 28 degrees all day I was about to hit a boiler room at 35 degrees with about 15 more miles to go, after done about 70 miles.

The great thing about this area is that once you are near the sea there is a cycle path and that made me feel that I was tantalisingly close. The slightly irritating thing is that the cycle path runs for literally miles and miles. So although I was on the cycle path I was still about 6 miles from the centre of Nice. I was in Cagnes sur Mer, following the cycle path on and on, thinking I’d pass the Cote d’Azur airport at any moment – which marks the entrance into Nice. I could see lots of aeroplanes but there was no sign of the terminal. So I just pressed on and pressed on, weaving round rollerbladers and people who couldn’t ride a bike in a straight line – another sign that I was in the south of France. Eventually I passed the airport and I was on the Promenade des Anglais, the main coastal throroughfare in Nice. At that point I rang Aodan and was able to tell him I was in Nice. The great thing is arrived at my destination within 5 minutes of my estimated time of arrival. So he was able to walk down and meet me on the coast. It was really brilliant because as I rode along I was getting nearer and nearer to where he was and he was able to see me from quite a distance – standing out like a sore thumb with all my cycle touring panniers in bright yellow. He got his camera ready as I approached him near the Beau Rivage bar, and he got a photo of me just as I reached the stopping point. Class. We then celebrated my arrival with an ice cream. I was just so glad to have arrived in Nice. My Garmin showed that I’d done 89.96 miles, which I couldn’t quite believe! It had definitely been the longest day. This had certainly made up for what should have been the climax of the tour the previous day. This was the best day I’d had in the saddle on the whole trip, and I was just glad to have made it from Dieppe all the way down to the South coast.