Riviera Gravel — Vinaigrier, Col d'Èze, Plateau de la Justice

Nice has two cycling identities. One belongs to the road — the Promenade, the corniches, the Col de Nice, the Col de Vence in the distance — and it is well documented. The other belongs to the gravel that runs through the hills directly above the city, parallel to all of it, largely empty, and accessible from the centre in under twenty minutes. This route belongs to the second.

The departure is from the Café du Cycliste on the Quai des Docks — the natural starting point for most rides out of Nice, two minutes from the waterfront. The route heads east and immediately begins to gain altitude through the urban fabric, the streets narrowing as the hill rises, before the Mont Boron forest absorbs you. Mont Boron is the first surprise: a wooded promontory between Nice and Villefranche-sur-Mer, five minutes from the apartment blocks, with trails through the trees and a sudden view over the Baie de Villefranche from the top. The mode changes immediately. The city is already somewhere else.

The tracks through Mont Boron are rocky in places — choose the line carefully, or follow the route precisely. The reward for getting it right is the Col de Villefranche on the Moyenne Corniche, at 149 metres, from where the village of Èze is visible ahead on its limestone pinnacle. The road is fast and the temptation is to follow it. Instead, turn left toward the Parc du Vinaigrier.

The Vinaigrier is a hillside park that Nice has been quietly tending for a long time without ever quite putting it on the tourist map. The writer Louis Nucéra, who grew up in these streets and wrote about this city with the particular ferocity of someone who loved it without illusion, described it as the beauty that wanted to be eternal — la Beauté qui se voulait éternelle. The trails climb through tiered olive groves and past beehives, ascending toward the observatory at Èze. The surface is loose in the upper sections: slow down, pick the line, accept that the gravel is doing what gravel does.

At the top of the Vinaigrier, the Col des Quatre Chemins sits at 329 metres — four roads converging, the name self-explanatory. Turn left here for the Route Stratégique du Mont Leuze, which is where the ride earns its reputation.

The Route Stratégique is a military road, built to reach the forts above — the kind of infrastructure that was designed for horse-drawn cannon rather than cyclists, which is to say it was designed without compromise. It climbs the north face of Mont Leuze and the Plateau de la Justice for 2.5 kilometres at an average of 6%, with an opening ramp of 10–15% that makes itself known immediately, followed by a sustained middle section at 7%, and a final approach that offers no relief until the summit ridge. The surface is compacted gravel, the road is narrow, the traffic is essentially absent. On the left, through gaps in the vegetation, the first ridges of the Mercantour appear to the north. Below, the valley of the Paillon drops toward the sea.

The Plateau de la Justice opens at the top: a high limestone platform in the Parc Départemental de la Grande Corniche, with the Mediterranean to the south and the Alps to the north in the same glance. At roughly 500 metres altitude, and 3 kilometres from the sea as the crow flies, it is one of the more improbable views available from a saddle in the Alpes-Maritimes. The Fort de la Revère sits to the east at 687 metres, accessible via a short extension if the legs allow — its orientation table allows you to name everything from the Écrins to Cap Ferrat to the Italian border.

From the Plateau, two options. Continue to the Col d'Èze at 507 metres and descend via the Grande Corniche toward Nice — a fast road descent with the Baie des Anges ahead, the city below, the whole afternoon laid out in front of you. Or take the gravel variant south via Mont Leuze for two additional kilometres of unpaved track before rejoining the tarmac. The second option adds nothing in terms of views that you haven't already had. It adds everything in terms of the logic of the day.

The descent to Nice via the Grande Corniche is long enough to remind you how much altitude you climbed and fast enough to make you glad you did.

Route