Ben Fradet's blog

Coast of Provence bicycle tour

Last week, my partner and I went on a bicycle tour along the French Mediterranean coast in Provence. We started from the West of Marseille where we live to join friends near Fréjus which is further along the French Mediterranean coast to the East.

I’ll first go over our bikes and the gear we packed and then I’ll dig into the route we took.

Bikes

My partner is running a Giant Escape 2, it’s her old commuter bike reused as a tourer. We’re currently looking for a replacement and more specifically a Trek Checkpoint ALR 5 which will be way lighter (around 4kgs less) and better equipped, in particular with a Shimano 105 groupset.

I’m using a Ribble CGR SL with an Ultegra groupset geared as 36-52/11-34 which I found suprisingly okay touring with our quite light setup, as we shall see.

Gear

Let’s go through each section in turn:

1. Tent: we’re using an MSR Carbon Reflex 2 with a footprint which weighs around 1kg altogether
2. Sleeping gear: we’re using Sea to Summit Spark SP1 sleeping bags which weigh 340gr each and Sea to Summit Ultralight Air sleeping mats which weigh 355gr each
3. Our reperation kit: with a couple of spare inner tubes and a tube repair kit, some eletrical tape, a Crankbrothers M19 multi-tool, a MAM knife (which is truly excellent) and a hand pump. Finally, we also had to pack a U-lock (if anyone has suggestions for a good lighter lock, I’m all ears!).
4. Toiletries
5. First aid kit
6. Electronics: we have an X-Moove Solargo 15000mAh battery which is a cool solar battery (we haven’t put it through many cycles so I don’t know what it’s worth in the long run yet), an e-reader and some cables. We also brought our phones which aren’t pictured.
7. Clothes
8. Rain coats
9. Underwear and towels
10. Cycling clothes
11. Swimming gear

We didn’t pack any cooking gear as we knew we’d be able to eat some place every night. Not pictured though, is the large amount of snacks we brought along and of course, our drinks.

Additionally, it turned out we didn’t need our rain coats or our sleeping bags for that matter as we rode through a major heat wave in France (reaching more than 45°C in some places). More on that later.

Bags

My partner was using a Zéfal Z-Adventure F10 handle bar bag to carry the sleeping mats and bags and our underwear.

I used a pair of Vaude Aqua rear panniers mounted on a Tubus Disco to carry well, all the rest!

We also carried a pair of Zéfal Magnum 1L bottles each for our drinks.

Finally, we each had a Vaude Carbo top tube bag to carry our smartphone and snacks.

All in all, my partner was carrying approximately 7kgs while I had around 17kgs of gear.

Route

We usually tried to ride during the early hours of the day, with the ideal timeframe being between 5 and 10AM.

Day 1, Martigues -> La Ciotat

First day of our journey, taking us through Marseille and to La Ciotat, a beautiful city in the calanques which invented pétanque!

We left a bit later than anticipated at around 6:20AM and rode through the first leg of our journey to the eastern part of Marseille where we stopped for a second breakfast in a bakery. This first part was fairly easy as it’s mostly flat and we know the road quite well.

The second part is a lot more difficult than the first as you follow the road around Mont Puget which is quite hilly.

Unfortunately, when we started going down towards Cassis my partner got a flat tire. It turned out she was carrying a piece of glass for some time which tore through her tire and ultimately her tube. We stopped to quickly change tubes and headed towards Cassis to buy a new tire.

That wasn’t the last of our trouble as the bike shop in Cassis was closed. After this small détour, we decided to head directly to La Ciotat and find a new bike shop.

Luck took a turn for the better at this point, we didn’t hit another flat despite the tear in the tire for the 12 kms separating us from La Ciotat and we stumbled upon the excellent Cycles Lleba bikeshop. The owner offered us an excellent bargain: two Vittoria Zaffiro Pro tires and two Conti Tour tubes for 40 euros!

After all these adventures, we reached our campsite at 11AM, had lunch, took a nap, swapped some tires and enjoyed the sea!

Here’s the bikemap for that first day:

Day 2, La Ciotat -> Hyères

The second day was quieter, less distance travelled and less elevation gain, taking us to family members in Hyères continuing our journey eastward.

Compared to the previous day, it was fairly uneventful. We woke up at around 5AM, packed everything, had breakfast, and we were on our way at 6.

The first leg to Toulon had some beatiful scenery as you go through the vineyards after Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer and along the bay of Bandol as the sun comes up.

We stopped in Toulon to get a second breakfast at a bar and went back on our way. From Toulon to Hyères we used the dedicated bicycle path which goes through most of the Var department (which is known as “parcours cyclable du littoral” in French).

We reached our destination at around 9 and were able to enjoy a homemade couscous for lunch and we obviously also took the obligatory nap on the beach in the afternoon.

Here’s the bikemap for day 2:

Day 3, Hyères -> Fréjus

Given that the heat wave mentioned earlier was starting and we had quite a few kilometers to do, we decided to start earlier and left by 5AM. The goal for the day was to meet our friends near Fréjus.

We went back to the previous day’s bicycle path and headed towards Bormes-les-Mimosas. The road started to go uphill towards the Col de Gratteloup. However, this road is very narrow and very much in use by all sorts of lorries which can block both ways given how tight the laces are. As a result, I wouldn’t recommend it when cycling. We’ll see the alternative later in this post.

The road gets better going downhill as it is way larger and more beautiful. You find yourself in a charming valley between two small mountains. Bonus, it becomes completely flat quite quickly so you can really get the kilometers in.

We stopped for a quick second breakfast at La Môle and headed back towards Fréjus. Once you reach Port Grimaud, the road follows the Mediterranean sea until Fréjus.

We reached the campsite near Fréjus at around 10AM and it was already 31°C under shelter, I’ll let you imagine what it was like under the sun. We stopped for a couple of days for some well-deserved rest enjoying the beaches under the shadows of palm trees.

The bikemap for day 3:

During those two days of rest, we visited a few things and most notably the ruins of the Malpasset dam, one of the worst civil disaster in France during the twentieth century. It was really humbling stuff.

Day 6, Fréjus -> Hyères

For the way back we didn’t want to take the same route because:

• we might as well enjoy another part of the area
• as we said above, the road wasn’t great going uphill so downhill would be even worse

This road diverges from the former one at Port Grimaud and takes us through the beautiful villages of Ramatuelle, La Croix Valmer, Cavalaire-sur-Mer, Rayol-Canadel-sur-Mer and finally joins back the previous road at Bormes-les-Mimosas.

The landscapes were thoroughly breathtaking. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to do the scenery any justice through our pictures because the roads were so small you couldn’t really stop to take pictures wihtout putting yourself in danger.

Unfortunately, this itinerary was quite longer than the other one and we were litterally in the middle of the heat wave with 33°C under shelter at 10AM so we didn’t really enjoy it as much as we could have.

We arrived at around 11:30AM after 6 hours of riding:

Day 7, Hyères -> Martigues

After that long and hot day we were really drained and consequently decided to get a train back home. Note, that it’s free to take your bike with you on regional trains in France!

Conclusion

This was our first bike tour and was quite the learning experience, a few takeaways for our next tour:

• give ourselves a day or two of slack, you never know when you might want to take an extra day off the saddle
• always have a back up plan, for us it was taking the train
• try to plan around heat waves (hehe)

All in all, we rode around 350km for 2.8km elevation gain!

This was a preparation for our tour of Corsica which we’ll do in September so stay tuned for a new touring post!

If you have questions, feel free to ask them below!