94.32 km, 1,836 m
6th June – Nice to Hôtel Les Alizés – 11 Rue Alexandre Barety, 06260 Puget-Théniers, France
The grey, spitting skies of Manchester airport give us a cold shoulder as we fly off towards the warm welcoming arms of sunny Nice. A frustrating queue for biometric scanning before we are released into the airport car park. Martin and Jeff have done an INCREDIBLE job – driving our precious bicycles over from Bolton, picking up supplies (waiting outside Lidl before opening time), securing a spacious bit of concrete from the Nice airport parking attendant, and unloading all our bike bags.
Suncream is applied, then n-1 bikes assembled (a Mr Steve has mis-packed his pedals, skewers and a bit of his headset, which he decides are probably needed. He won’t be riding today). We start with a trip first: we manage to leave the carpark without the traditional getting lost lap of disgrace and unison Garmin beeping. It’s going to be a great week!
There are 21(?) riders, all decked out in our team kit – quite a sight as we pull through the traffic of Nice, nipping between the nose to tail Ferraris and Porches. What is described by several as a ‘punchy’ start pulls us up through the busy Nice streets, then steadily inland and uphill (of course it’s up hill – need to get used to this!) alongside the enticingly watery river Le Var. Just 10 miles in, there’s a collective lunch stop. Keen to review the patisserie, a polite waiter brings me a silver tray with EIGHT sample products! He informs me that I shall be ordering the Paris Brest. Au naturallement! It is a wheel-shaped pastry, r”ound, i.e. wheel-shaped, was “created in 1910 by Louis Durand, pâtissier of Maisons-Laffitte, at the request of Pierre Giffard, to commemorate the 1,200 km (750 mi) Paris–Brest–Paris bicycle race he had initiated in 1891”. Yum!
The cafe stop is a long one, some are devouring plates of lingine, another looked supiciously like a Full English Breakfast…we have so far cycled just ~10 miles.
Où sont les potholes?
UK potholes are a current bone of political contention. I have had some near misses a NASA moon buggy would struggle to surmount. But here, the tarmac stretches out like a ribbon of velvet. Laughably, at times the French have decided it was more like a hessian and have carefully applied new replacements, which glisten like a black treacle Yorkshire parkin in the sun.
The first col is Vence, with an unexpected, high-grade coffee van parked up for a round of (hipster biker) iced oatmilk lattes. At a gravel layby, our heroes, Martin and Jeff, pull up alongside and ply us with water, bananas and a bag of buns (TripAdvisor 5*, friendly service A+++), I’m worried about the cake supply if we’re going with the letter B…
Still a couple more smaller cols to round over (Saint Marc 1,017m; Col des Ferres 596m; and Col Saint-Raphael 875m). Riding with Craig, the descents are flowing and curvaceous with some big drops Ed later worrying described as being irresistibly ‘magnetted’ towards. We sweep down the remaining turns from Bezaudun-les-Alpes, and pull up at the Hotel Les Alizes, in Puget-Theniers.
A pre-ordered dinner is finally served after ~2hrs (and for some, quite a few beers in). There’s discussion on the mignot steak, which is not the beefy hit people were expecting. I can confirm here that in France, filet mignon usually refers to cuts of pork tenderloin or veal tenderloin (either way, the Smash looked tasty). After lots of dinner banter focused around the usual declaration that everyone is unfit, and won’t ‘beast’ it tomorrow, we retire for the night. (They will beast it).
(Sorry reader -I’m a day behind after a lagged start finishing work stuff…Will post Day 2, and who knows maybe 3, tomorrow!)
