At some point every expedition settles into a certain rhythm. Who’s up first in the morning, who tends to lag to breakfast but somehow manages to be first into the van, how the bikes get loaded up each day, which handlebars play nicely with which, and so on. That’s what happened as we leap-frogged our way south, cherry picking Blaise’s personal hit list of the best trails between Switzerland and the Mediterranean.

By the time we started noticing a change in the ecosystem from alpine to coastal, we were functioning like a well oiled machine, gobbling up stunning downhills off the top of climbs we’d watch in the Tour a month later. Col de Vars, Col d’Allos, Col de Champs; all bucket list worthy climbs for road bikes, and as we were discovering, all perfect foundations for even more impressive shuttle-assisted mountain biking. 3000 feet up a paved road in the van, another 1500 feet of climbing on a single-track, then 4-5000 feet of single-track downhill to some quant little village in another valley. 

That’s the formula we repeated until I think everyone’s minds started to lose the ability to process it all. How could there possibly be this much good riding? And how is there no one here? In 7 days of riding we saw, what, maybe, and I’m reaching here to say this, three other mountain bikers and we were on some of the finest trails any of us had ever ridden. 

Friday was when we started feeling the proximity to Provence. Dropping off the Col des Champs we could feel that the last major divide between mountains and sea had been crossed. The plants changed, became more diverse, the soil contained less rock and more decomposed organic matter. At one point we descended a road the width of today’s bike paths that had been built centuries before to carry armies from one valley to another. Overgrown by 500 years of under-use had transformed it into a single-track with unparalleled engineering. For sections we’d all but forget we were following an ancient road until all of a sudden we’d find ourselves on a section of ridgeline with this road carved out of the slopes or at the edge of a chasm with a beautifully made stone arch bridging the gorge. 

Later, after yet another 4000+ foot shuttle and another 2500 feet of climbing on our bikes through forests of pines and fields of brilliant yellow flowers, we crested a backcountry pass on a single-track called the Pra Battaglier.

Standing there it felt like we could taste the ocean even though it was still over 45 miles away and 7000 feet lower. Below us the mountains inexorably dropped away into a haze of coastal fog.

From there we dropped into a broad valley that reminded us of Utah deserts with a loosely defined trail snaking down accross crumbling, jagged red rock and dirt. An absolute highlight of the trip. 90 minutes from the crowds of the Côte d’Azur, we had this gigantic playground all to ourselves.

We rode the length of that red valley, working our way down on an incredulous combination of slabs and escarpments. At times you’d look back and barely manage to pick out the route you’d just descended. 

Leaving the bright red earth behind, we found ourselves on a trail descending toward an uninhabited medieval village clinging to the side of the mountain. 

We left our bikes at the entrance to this tiny village that cars have never set rubber in to walk its quiet streets and discovered it was indeed inhabited, by 38 people and at least four times as many cats. We felt like time travelers, exploring this incongruous place that somehow exists hundreds of years removed from the yachts and Formula 1 cars of nearby Monaco. 

That night, after another increasingly rowdy and consequence filled downhill, we slept in a well worn hotel on the Route Nacional to Nice, a similarly incongruous scene compared to the absolute heights of our riding from earlier in the day. But that was the rhythm of Breauxdureaux, and on the Road to the South what’s important is where you ride, not where you sleep.