June 19, 2011 -

This road was a complete surprise to me - I'd ridden the coast road south of Cannes (see elsewhere on here) and then negotiated the coastline to get round to St Tropez just so I could get a photo of the 'Welcome to St Tropez' sign, and then I wanted to get to my hotel in Marseille by the shortest possible route. The GPS sent me this way.... It was quite a shock to discover that this was actually a really nice, fun, fast, flowing, challenging road. Obviously it lacks the jaw dropping views of the roads in the Pyrenees proper, in favour of tree cover, but the terrain of the foothills is plenty interesting and the road twists and turns aplenty as it follows the terrain. There are less zeros on the heights of some of the drops, but you still wanted to ride off the unguarded edge of the road in some of the twisty sections, the only thing to stop you plummetting to the distant ravine bottom would be a very solid tree or several. Actually, it's good to bear that in mind on the way in - it is because I was in 'transit mode' rather than 'riding challenging unforgiving roads' mode that I found myself unintentionally having so much fun that I was dragging the centrestand round corners, 3 feet from the edge of an unguarded 500 foot drop. Given the many epic delights available within 50 miles of this road, in summary I'd certainly not make a special trip to ride this road, but it was still a pleasant surprise. It also handily links the Alpine magic of Route Napoleon and the coast road south of Cannes with the joys of the Pyrenees via a half decent road.