Bike road trip Alps to the sea – With the CLIFF 4x4 across France (INT-EN)

Summer time is, as everyone knows, vacation time – and somehow over the last years it turned into a steady tradition: a bike road trip to France.

When you hit your late twenties, your tolerance for discomfort starts to shift. As romantic as those nights once felt – sleeping in a van with the thin mattress in the trunk, peeing in the bushes, and showering from a cold water canister – at some point you just need… more.

A proper built-in toilet with a comfy seat, a mattress that doesn’t give you back pain after two hours, a spacious fridge/freezer combo and hot water anyway. Sounds like a description of a luxury apartment in Nice – or exactly like the setup of our Sunlight CLIFF 4×4 with beefy off-road tires.

Thanks to Sunlight we got to swap DIY-camping for age-appropriate glamping for the length of one road trip – and enjoy all its perks!

Kickoff on Swiss asphalt: Furka – Grimsel – Susten Pass 3600 m / 130 km

How do you best kick off a two-week mountain bike road trip? Clearly with 3600 meters of climbing on the road bike! If the DIY-camping setup already fell victim to age, there’s no way around shaved legs, skinny tires and aero jerseys anymore.

But honestly, Luki needed quite some convincing. No surprise I stood no chance against the highly motivated chairman of the freshly founded Zona Rossa road cycling club. My total yearly mileage on the road bike amounts to maybe half of what we climbed on that one insane ride…

But a little suffering never hurt anyone, right? And the views up high almost make you forget how far and steep the road really is.
There’s nothing like a full day of grinding in the saddle followed by a bunch of ice-cold Schwechater beers!

Down to business

Road cycling is fine and currently en vogue, but not the reason we’re here! The real vacation only starts the next day, when the white carbon shoes get swapped for soft slip-ons, and aero gear gets replaced with baggies. Finally bike park laps again – and instead of pushing our limits, we can just chill on the chairlift. That’s the life!

With high expectations we drove to Bernex – and it didn’t disappoint. A super sweet, small bike park with everything you crave: a jumpline by master Vinc, chunky DH tracks and secret trails as far as you can look. Camping spot right at the top station with a view over Lake Geneva and a picture-perfect sunset included. For dinner we whip up Fondue au fromage from our star-level camper kitchen, sublimé par Lukas dans toute sa virtuosité – a cheese fondue from Luki in peak culinary form!

But anyone can park at the end of the asphalt road. If you mount all-terrain tires on your Campervan, you want to use them! At first unsure if we’d make it to the ski area’s top station, the local lift guy pushed us on: “C’est 4×4?? C’est bon!!” – Well then! Roads in France clearly aren’t as polished as in Saalbach/Hinterglemm, but our rolling palace didn’t mind one bit.

The next day: off to Morgins. No question – the best berms in all of France. Sure, it rained… but who cares. Morgins happens only once a year. So we went for the 5-hour ticket until we looked like a schnitzel freshly hammered and breaded by Reitbauer himself. Slip and slide and all that.

Then: World Cup in Les Gets. So many lifts, so many lines, so many spectators, so many chainsaws, so much beer. You’d need a separate article for it – if we hadn’t spent Thursday to Sunday morning doing everything we could to erase those memories again. Mon Dieu!
What stuck: a burning town center crowded like never before, a podium for our Andi Kolb, and the soundscape of thousands of chainsaws at every hour of day and night.

On Sunday evening we were honestly relieved to escape the circus. The boozy World Cup weekend faded away silently in the sunset – of course thanks to all-wheel drive.

Provence de Luxe

Week two of the road trip we crashed with our friends Max, Matzi, Pfuisi and Hannah. Valberg isn’t exactly around the corner, but the trails in Provence happily justify a full day in the car.
The reward follows the next day: the Provençal mountains rising into the deep-blue sky like a painting – and we immediately felt how soothing true silence in nature really is… especially compared to the shrieking of a Stihl at ear height.
Towards Rochers de la Maïre, the 1500 meters of climbing in total peace felt like balm for our souls. This is how I imagine a vacation!

On the tracks of the Enduro World Cup, the meters we earned on the way up turn into pure joy on the way down. At first exposed, then across wide open meadows, before the forest opens up into one perfect switchback after another. Caught in an endless flow on a high-class hiking trail – delightful.

Thanks to Max, the whole week became a feast of trail delicacies. Around Valberg he served us one dream trail after the next, starting with a trilogy of colorful terrain:
➡️ Tuesday: an evening delight on grey earth.
➡️ Wednesday: 1500 vertical meters down on red earth.
➡️ Thursday: a top-tier loop on bright white ground.

By the way, the donkeys are to blame for all that divine flow! Back in the day they were used to transport goods across the mountains – and luckily, donkeys dislike steep climbs just as much as we dislike steep descents. So the trails snake through the landscape like hand-crafted IMBA textbook lines.

Friday got spicy again: from Sospel we started with 700 meters of hike & bike up the Grand Mont. In the heat not exactly enjoyable, but the reward? Besides the mountain vibes now also the vast sea slowly appearing in front of us, more dramatic with every step. And as the final ace up his sleeve, Max pulled another masterpiece of a trail: from the 1400-meter Grand Mont all the way down toward the sea, never-ending, spitting us straight onto the coast in Menton.

And so we end up sitting in the sand in the late afternoon, beer in hand, sun on our stomachs.
No idea how you could finish two weeks of luxury-bike-road-tripping any better!

Next year? Of course!
Tradition lives.