I took on the Route des Grandes Alpes at 50+ [Pt 3]

Watch an exceptionally average cyclist complete the toughest and most iconic bike ride in France – la Route des Grandes Alpes. In the spirit of “Doing Hard Things” in my 50’s, I teamed up with two experienced and skilled cyclist friends on an epic challenge that would take us over the highest passes in the French Alps from Geneva in the north, to Nice on the Mediterranean.

This episode covers the final section of this 7 (and a half) day journey, from Barcelonette to Nice over six cols (passes).

00:00 Introduction
01:07 Day 5 – Barcelonette to Col de Valberg
07:55 An accident!
09:44 Day 6 – Valberg to Sospel (3 cols)
15:32 Day 7 – Sospel to Nice!

Check out the Packing Guide here: https://youtu.be/eipcYIt_zcI

Welcome to the third and final installment of our cycling adventure on the route to Grand Alp in the French Alps. In this video, we’ll begin where we left off in the last episode in the delightful town of Barcelonet. We’ll cycle through the Ultravence Alps and into the Maritime Alps, crossing six more coals on the way to Manton on the Mediterranean. Along the way, you’ll see that one of our riders has an unfortunate accident, but we still managed to make it to the end of the route in Nice. This day begins with a quick trip to the bike shop to replace a couple of missing bolts on my cleat. We have two coals and 2200 m to climb today and shorter than average by distance, but that’s a bit misleading because we end at the top of our second climb. so we don’t rack up a bunch of free kilometers with a long descent at the end. Beautiful start to this ride. This road is quiet and the pavement is good. Sun is shining and it hasn’t started to pitch up yet. One of the unexpected treats of the route de Gronzal are all the incredible canyons you ride through. This is one of them, but there are probably four or five that would make great day rides or driving tours. all on their own. And I wasn’t expecting the canyons to be as beautiful as the mountains on this ride. 25 km of windy. That’s good. I was thinking about, you know, as you do one of these climbs, you have these kilometer markers all the way up that also tell you what the average uh elevation gain is for that kilometer. So, it’ll say 5%. or 7% or 8%. And uh let’s say you’re on a 5% kilometer and then you get a downhill bit, you always think, “Ah I’m going to pay the price for this downhill bit cuz there’s going to be something really steep coming up that ends up averaging out to 5%.” So you start to resent the downhill bits. But then we were talking about it thinking you should enjoy the downhill bit. It’s free meters. So, put those in your back pocket and keep going rather than complain about how it’s going to get steeper in a sec. But it’s interesting the mental games you play. I love all these timely little public water fountains that show up in the villages and towns that you pass, and they always seem to appear exactly when you need them. I really enjoyed the ride up Cold of Leold. I know it’s probably not on anybody’s bucket list. It certainly wasn’t on mine, but quietly it’s just very beautiful. Some nice waterfalls, beautiful scenery, and just a lack of traffic, which you really appreciate after a while. The constant stream of motorcycles going by gets to be a bit much on some of the more well-known clims. We are at the top of de la Kol and this is the first time I have seen Nice on the sign. So we are getting warmer literally and figuratively. That’s exciting. We have two more days. Well, we have the rest of this day and then a big huge day and then kind of a half day in Tenise. Wondering around in a blurry time. In a foggy state, surrounded by ghost, but you’re still alive. There’s no time away. It is time to Stumbling around, always feeling lost. It is time to leave. This is not a game for the faint of heart. I know you agree. No one knows who will be chosen. to let the truth out in the open. After you’ve come down from cold dele, you travel along the valley floor for quite a while along the river and you pass through some cute little towns and a lot of awesome tunnels like the ones you’re seeing here until you finally arrive at Guom. And then at Guom you start the climb back up again towards Cole Dealberg which is the second and last climb of our day on our way to cold devel. Alberg. It’s like 29.5 Celsius and we’re doing a,000 m climb and it’s exposed to the sun all the way. So, I’m a little worried about well just about the obvious making sure that I have enough water and going to take some shade breaks along the way. I think you don’t really see it in the video here, but for a lot of the climb to Valberg, there is a sheer drop on your right. And it’s a little bit scary when you’re sharing a very narrow road with quite a few cars and a lot of motorcycles. And at one point, a group of about 10 Lamborghinis and Ferraris and supercars went screaming by, making us very nervous. We are at the top of cold devel. What’s wrong with that? This was a very hard earned climb. Holy 1,200 m at the end of a hot day. Woo. I’m going to try. It’s true. You did it. That’s true. What did 99% of the world do today? Sat on their fat asses and ate cheeses. Cheesies. I did nothing. So after we had our celebratory beer at the end, it seemed like a good idea when we’re looking across the ski slopes to give the luje a shot, the summer luge. And so we went on over in our still in our cycling gear and our bike shoes and made our way up the hill. And this is where things went a little bit sideways. Now, I don’t know if it was the giant 8% beer we just had or if it was the natural competitiveness between two childhood friends, but one of us made it safely to the bottom of the luge. And the other one, not so much. Yay. You actually bail. Are you hurt? Oh, dude, look at that. I think my elbow. Oh man. Good. I feel that’s how And here too. There’s some holes. Oh, there’s some holes. Little teeny ones. Yeah. You fell right out of the lid. That is unprecedented. Really? No. Look at that. There’s a cycling. Yeah. I’ll The way I’m going to edit all this together, it’s all cycling. It’s going to be a cycling thing. Yeah, sure. Cuz I don’t want anyone to know that you bailed on the children’s ride. Where are you? And then this is where the luge had it took a bite out of you. Yes. So, got there. Those two suckers are right through his shirt, too. Elbow. This one is going to hurt like hell. It’s going to be the worst. I think the elbow’s going to be the worst. And then the knee. And then two on the knee scrapes on the knee. Mike. Oh, yeah. Mike, what were you thinking? I was thinking you were thinking You were thinking Maverick and Goose, weren’t you? I was thinking Elliot. Elliot’s ahead of me. I’m getting getting real. Getting ready. Getting fueled. Mhm. We are leaving. Beautiful little Valberg, France at the top of the coldberg. Just uh doing a final check on the Airbnb. Make sure we’re leaving it in good shape. Last minute tweaking on the bikes. Just waiting for our hero. That’s me. And her sidekick, the less than glorious hero that can’t survive the summer luge. Oh, we’re going to enjoy that a lot the next couple days. He’s not, though. He’s not. He’s not. He’s in some pain. Poor fella. All right, let’s hit the road. Day six is the last big day of the journey with 109 km and 2800 m of climbing. Today, we go over three mountain passes. Although, if you remember, we ended high last night, so we only have a little dip and then we’re already at our first pass. For some reason, Google Translate calls cold deol neck of the balls. Now, I’m not French, so I’m not going to question it, but that can’t be right. Nevertheless, after a brief dip into a high valley and then a short climb, we are at our first coal of the day. The ride down was long and super windy and so fun, but I didn’t really get any good footage of it. So, here we are beginning our ascent towards Cole St. Martin. Oh yeah, he really got pounded. There you can see the road that we’ve just come up. All you want to do is ride around. Sally, you can really tell we’ve passed into the southern Alps now because the landscape is more aid and it’s dry and hot. And even though the mountains aren’t as high and dramatic as they were up north, still Cole St. Martin was a long climb. Arriving at the top of Cole St. Martin at the ski area. You can see that this isn’t quite the vibrant ski resort that Vald desire and others were. Probably because the ski season’s hit or miss this far south. So soon after you reach Roilier, you begin the last big climb of the trip, Cold Dini. And it’s funny, even though we’ve now done, I don’t know, a dozen big coals, I always feel the same at the bottom. Nervous, butterflies in the stomach, a feeling of dread. That just hasn’t gone away yet. And so, I’m back to the mental gymnastics and talking myself into it and hyping myself up one kilometer at a time. I’ve been very quiet on this climb. We’re on colder terini and there’s about 8 7 km left and just don’t feel like talking to the camera. Just trying to keep my head down and keep going. And that’s what it’s like. It seems like every climb is 1,200 m, which is 3,800 ft. So like every one of these suckers beats the crap out of you. So many motorcycles too. What’s cool about coldrini if I remember right from that pass you get your first peak at the Mediterranean which is mindboggling to me that we’re actually almost there. I hope that’s true cuz that will be such a cool moment. I can’t believe it. And my amigos are waiting like heroes as usual. Here we go. Oh my gosh. The descent from Torini was really special. And I know I always say the descents are awesome, but this one was really good for a few reasons. one because you know it’s the last big descent of the entire trip so you just want to squeeze every bit out of it that you can. Also, it was spectacularly beautiful and you went through as you could see this archway which led to a little chapel up on the mountain side and then the road itself was just like a noodle with many tight little switchbacks. So quite technical but quite fun to ride. And also in the late afternoon it seemed like there was very little traffic to have to compete with so you had the road to yourself and it was amazing. Oh yeah. Okay. Just getting off on our very last day heading out from Suspel, France. We’re leaving a little later today because we have a short day. So, we were a little more casual. Uh anyway, yeah. So, lovely place here in Selc. And now we head to the coast. 20 km to the coast. We have just set off and we are climbing a little thing called Cold Castion above uh Suspel on our way to Menon which is on the water. I haven’t looked at the elevation map but I know when uh Mike and Georgia refer to a a climb as spicy, that’s another word for hard. So, it’s small but maybe steep. That’s okay. Getting close. Hey, buddy. There is the Mediterranean. We found it. We found it. We’ve been looking everywhere. Once we crested Kic Castion, I was really just thinking about two things. Celebrating what we’d accomplished to make it all the way here from Geneva and also staying safe cuz there’s a lot of traffic once you reach the French Riviera. Would you look here where we are now? The route to Grand Alp used to end in Menon until they moved the ending to Nice. But confusingly, there’s still a kilometer zero plaque in Menon. So, it felt like since we were there anyway, we needed to go and see and touch the plaque. Ready? We are above Monaco. Look at that. It just looks rich. This last stretch was just like a victory lap. We went up and above Monaco and EZ with the panoramic views of the French Riviera and it just gave me a chance to reflect on the scale of what we’d accomplished over the last 700 plus km. And I just felt so overwhelmingly grateful. Somebody there. Somebody awesome. If you’re thinking about doing the route to Gronz yourself, I highly recommend it. Then make sure you check out my packing smart uh video with the link in the description down here. Also, if you’d like to follow us on our midlife adventures as we try to live with some purpose and passion in our middle years, then subscribe to our channel. And lastly, if this is the only video you’ve seen in this series, there’s a whole playlist that starts from Lake Geneva and ends in Nice. So, click the playlist link somewhere here. Thanks. This is what it looks like when you are finished the route Grand Alp. You take your ass off of one hard object and you put it onto another one. Yeah. But somehow this feels so much better. Yeah.