Mountain Cycling Routes 🚵‍♀️

On September 1, 2026, France and Italy opened the Chemin RivierALP, a signed network of walking and cycling routes running from the Piedmont Alps down to the Mediterranean. It follows the old salt roads, the trading routes that carried salt inland from the coast for centuries, and the whole network adds up to more than 430 kilometers.

Nine of the routes are for walkers. The rest are for cyclists, and that is what this guide covers. Nothing here was bulldozed into existence: these are old military roads, mule tracks and forest pistes that have been mapped, signed and joined up across the border.

A note on the count. The tourist boards describe the network as nine walking and seven cycling itineraries. As of today, the official RivierALP site publishes six cycling routes, and those six are the ones below. If a seventh appears, we will add it here.

One thing to understand before you read the numbers. The difficulty ratings below use the singletrack scale, where S0 is a smooth track anyone comfortable on a mountain bike can ride, and S3 means steps, loose rock and switchbacks that will have most riders walking. Several of these routes are S0 for hours and then S3 for twenty minutes, so read the surface split as well as the grade.

The 3 Routes from the Alps to the Sea

Col de Tende to Menton

This is the route people will plan a holiday around, and it is the only one of the six that finishes in France. You come off the col, pick up the Roya and follow it all the way down: Tende, then La Brigue, then Saorge stacked up its cliff, then Sospel, then the sea.

Two things to know. The first is that it is genuinely technical in places, so the S3 rating is not decoration. The second is that the Roya is the valley that storm Alex cut in two in October 2020, when roads, bridges and parts of villages went into the river. Riding down it now, through places that were cut off for months, is not the same ride it was in 2019.

Col de Tende to Sanremo

If you have ridden the Alta Via del Sale as a day out from Limone, this is the version that does not turn around. It stays high on the salt road, then drops into the Riviera dei Fiori and finishes on the seafront at Sanremo.

The Allavena refuge at Colla Melosa has been run by the Bordighera section of the Italian Alpine Club since it was founded in 1947, and it is the natural overnight stop. Bajardo, the medieval village on the ridge above Sanremo, is the other stop worth building a day around.

Col de Tende to Imperia

The quietest of the three coast-bound routes. You climb out of the ski station onto the Via Marenca at over 2,000 meters, then descend for two days, through the Marguareis park and under Monte Saccarello, before the old mule tracks between the Colle del Garezzo and the Ligurian valleys drop you at Imperia.

One warning, and it is worth reading before you plan: The GPX file published for this route on the official RivierALP site is not the Imperia route. We downloaded it and measured it: it is 124.2 km and it finishes in Menton, which makes it a copy of the Col de Tende to Menton track. Until that is corrected, do not load it and assume you are heading for Imperia. It is also why the Imperia line is missing from our map above. We would rather leave it off than draw the wrong one.

The 3 Shorter Mountain Routes

These three stay in the mountains. They are the ones to ride if you have a day rather than a week, or if you want to build your own crossing by linking sections together at Margaria Loxe, which is where most of the network meets.

La Brigue to Colle del Garezzo

The easiest of the six to ride and the easiest to reach from the coast, which makes it the obvious first taste of the network. It is one long, steady climb out of La Brigue on the military roads that used to guard this border, with tunnels cut into the rock and, on a clear day, views that open all the way back to the sea.

The effort is all in the climbing, not the terrain. There is nothing technical on it, but 1,292 meters of ascent in 28 kilometers is still 1,292 meters.

Pian delle Gorre to the Alta Via del Sale

The shortest route on the network, and the one most people will ride as a link rather than a day out on its own. It connects the Pesio valley to the salt road at the Don Barbera refuge, which is the junction that makes the multi-day crossings possible.

It starts above 1,000 meters in the Pesio valley and climbs through the Bosco del Prel, one of the finest silver fir woods in the Alps. Then the Colle dei Prel at 1,615 meters and the Passo del Duca at 1,989 meters tip you into something completely different: the Conca delle Carsene, a karst amphitheater riddled with caves that European cavers have been working for decades. Fifteen kilometers, two landscapes.

Worth a stop before you start: the Certosa di Santa Maria, the Pesio charterhouse, founded in 1173 and still a religious house today. It is not what you expect to find at the trailhead of a mountain bike route.

Rastello to Piaggia & the Alta Via del Sale

The most climbing of any route on the network relative to its length. The first hours up to Pian Marchisio are the hard part; after that the plateau opens out with the Marguareis in front of you and the rest of the day makes sense.

The landscape changes by the hour: dense forest in the Ellero valley, then the Bosco delle Navette, then the karst plateau of the Marguareis, then the Brigasque hamlets. From Gruppetti at 1,860 meters the singletrack up to the Passo delle Saline is properly technical, and on a bike without electric assist you will be carrying it in places. The col tops out at 2,174 meters, and the view across the Marguareis from there is the reason to do this one.

Rastello still has paved traces of the Via Pompea, a Roman road built around 100 BC that ran down to the sea. It carried flour, wine, oil and, above all, salt, and it was the ground fought over in the salt wars between Savoy and the local communes. The place names have not forgotten: Casa del Sale, Passo delle Saline, Colletta delle Salse.

The Passport & the Basket

The Passeport du Chemin RivierALP, the route passport, is free. In France you pick one up at the Menton or Tende tourist office, or from any local business signed up to the Club RivierALP Outdoor. In Italy it is the IAT offices at Cuneo , Limone Piemonte , Terme di Valdieri , Chiusa di Pesio and Ormea , the information points at Entracque , Roccaforte Mondovì and Imperia , and the Sanremo tourist kiosk . There is a digital version as well.

You get it stamped as you go. In France the stamps are given out at tourist offices, at the town halls of the stage villages, and by Club RivierALP Outdoor members along the way. In Italy it is tourist offices and Club members. It doubles as a logbook: there is space for each stage’s dates, start and finish, distance, time and weather.

Collect every stamp for one complete itinerary and you take the passport to whichever of the three finish points you rode to — Menton, Sanremo or Imperia — and you are given the Panier du voyageur, a basket of local produce. The basket is not for arriving. It is for arriving with a full set of stamps.

Where You Collect It

The official page names the three towns but not a desk, so ask at the tourist office in whichever one you finish at — Menton , Sanremo or Imperia . Call ahead rather than counting on it at the end of a long ride. The Menton office is on +33 4 83 93 70 20.

Before You Ride

Three things the route pages do not put in front of you, and all three matter more than the elevation profile.

Charging

There are charging points for electric bikes in a number of the stage towns and villages, on both sides of the border. On a route like Col de Tende to Menton, 124 km with 3,698 meters of climbing, that is the difference between three stages and two.

Working Dogs

These are working pastures and the flocks are guarded by patous, livestock guardian dogs kept to deter wolves. They are not aggressive by nature, but they are suspicious of anyone who is not part of the flock, and speed is what sets them off. RivierALP’s own advice to cyclists is to slow down when you see a flock, get off the bike and walk, and go wide around rather than through.

If a dog comes to you: stop, face it, arms and poles down by your sides. No direct eye contact, no sudden movements. Talk calmly and give it time to look at you. Take off a hood or cap so it can see you are a person. If you are worried, put your bag or jacket between you and the dog. When it settles, move off slowly.

Signs on the trail mark where the dogs are working, the WaffApp and Pasto Kézako apps map the grazing areas, and the local tourist offices know the grazing dates.

If Something Goes Wrong

112 works on both sides of the border. Give them where you are (place, route, altitude), who you are and your number, what has happened and how many people are hurt, when it happened, and the weather where you are standing. And before you set off, tell someone at home your route and the time you expect to be back. RivierALP puts that at the top of its own checklist, ahead of everything else.