The upper Var valley around Puget-Théniers is a strange and beautiful corridor: a wide bed of grey gravel with the river braiding through it, steep wooded slopes on either side, and above them the bare limestone of the Pre-Alps catching the light. The N202 runs through it from Nice towards Digne, and for riders coming back from the Verdon it is the long, satisfying homeward leg, quick and open with the river beside you.
Puget-Théniers itself is a small town of under two thousand people, built where the Roudoule stream comes down to meet the Var. Its most famous son is Auguste Blanqui, the nineteenth-century revolutionary who spent much of his life in prison, and in the square stands a powerful bronze by Aristide Maillol, a woman with her hands bound behind her back, made in his honour. The town is also a stop on the narrow-gauge railway that runs from Nice to Digne, and on summer Sundays an old steam train puffs up the valley from here, which is a fine sight if you happen to be on the road alongside.
The water is the reason for the stop. The Var is cold even in high summer, fed by snowmelt from the Mercantour, and its gravel banks make natural beaches where you can wade in to the knees and feel it bite. Swim only in calm pools away from the main channel, because the river rises quickly after storms in the mountains, and never close to the dams and weirs downstream. The tributaries, the Roudoule and the Cians, have smaller, clearer pools in the gorges, and locals know their favourites.
Around here the riding gets serious if you leave the main road. Just upstream the Gorges de Daluis and, a little east, the Gorges du Cians cut through deep red rock, with tunnels, overhangs and narrow ledges where the road clings to the cliff, and they are among the most dramatic roads in the southern Alps. Climb them early in the day before the camper vans come, and watch for fallen stones after rain.
Puget-Théniers has cafés, a bakery and the basic services of a small town, and you should find fuel on the main road here, but stations are scarce up the side valleys. Carros, on the edge of the Nice plain, is the next large town, about thirty kilometres downstream, and from there the coast and the traffic begin again.