Nice

The Riviera has a way of hiding its mountains until you go looking for them.

A gravel loop above Nice in three hours — Mont Boron, the Parc du Vinaigrier, the Route Stratégique, Col d'Èze, Plateau de la Justice. The Côte d'Azur without the traffic.

Ninety-five kilometres from Nice into the hinterland and back. The Col de Vence is the reason — 9.6 kilometres of south-facing climbing above an artists' town, with the Mediterranean laid out below at the top.

Tende · Casterino · Refuge Don Barbera · Passo di Tanarello

Fifteen kilometres from the Promenade des Anglais, above the traffic and the sea light, there is a mountain that most visitors to Nice will never see. The Mont Férion sits at 1 412 metres in the pre-Alps behind the coast, connected to the villages of Levens, Coaraze, and Duranus by a network of DFCI forest roads built for fire prevention and discovered, inevitably, by the cyclists who live here and needed somewhere to go that wasn't tarmac.

Promenade spins and Madone days — where the Côte d'Azur peloton recovers.

Two cols above Nice in a single loop — the elegant Col de Braus and the legendary Col de Turini, 1,604 metres, home of the Monte Carlo Rally. Sospel in between. 112 km, 2,497 metres of climbing.