The highest paved through road in Europe - Col de la Bonette from Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée (South)

Cime de la Bonette is the highest paved through road in Europe and the highest road used by the Tour de France. The ride takes the southern approach from Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée. It is a truly spectacular ride, one of the most beautiful rides in France. It takes you deep into the Mercantour National Park. You feel like you are far away from civilization, just you, your bike, and amazing scenery. Because of the altitude, there are very few trees on this ride. That means you have unobstructed views most of the way. But all the beauty comes at a price. It is a long ride and the gradients are very irregular. But the real difficulty of this ride is the ending. At the end of the ride, you pass Col de la Bonette. From here the ride gets very difficult because of the steepness, and the thin air. Nevertheless, this last segment should not demotivate you. It is a true bucket-list ride everybody should try, either as a complete ride or in steps.

You can learn more about the ride on the following sites:
Strava:   / strava  

Climb by Bike: https://www.climbbybike.com/climb/col...

Climb Finder: https://climbfinder.com/en/climbs/col...

Take your indoor cycling to the next level with our indoor cycling app Open Road:
Dive into an immersive indoor cycling experience with our training app ’Open Road’ for Windows. The app lets you ride the ride for real and provides a better and more realistic indoor cycling experience compared to our ride-along videos on YouTube. The app is compatible with all ANT+ cycling devices, including smart trainers, power meters, and speed sensors. Athletes with spinning and exercise bikes without ANT+ compatibility can control the speed manually and enjoy riding with all the important cycling data displayed during the training session.

Learn more about our indoor cycling app 'Open Road' and sign up for your free ride on our website: https://bikethe.world

Support the Channel:
By supporting the channel you help us make it possible to share amazing rides from all over the world.

Strava:
Join our global cycling community and get kudos from fellow cyclists that like to bike the world:   / strava  

Bike the World with others:
Many indoor cycling studios around the world are using our videos for their indoor training sessions. If you want to bike the world at your local indoor cycling studio, please tell them about us.

Facebook:
Do you like our cycling videos? Then learn more about new rides, our training app 'Open Road', and other cycling-related activities by giving us a ‘like’ or 'follow' on Facebook:   / biketheworldvideos  

Just add music:
Most cyclists would agree that the ride to Col du Tourmalet is outstanding. But with music, opinions are very mixed. So we have added no music. Instead, we recommend adding your favorite music to the ride. It is quite simple. Mute YouTube and open a browser window. Find a site that offers music (Spotify, YouTube, etc…) and pick the music you like, and enjoy the ride... We have left the original sound of the ride out. This is because the noise from passing cars, vibrations from the road, wind, and the rider's breathing drowns the natural sound of the surroundings.

Terms of use:
Bike the World has filmed this ride with the journalistic purpose to document, describe, educate on, and informing about world-famous and epic bicycle rides around the world. As a courtesy, this video is free to view at home. Any public and/or commercial use needs a license or membership (contact us at https://bikethe.world for more information). Our videos may not be copied. Likewise, one may not use our videos outside our YouTube channel or our training app 'Open Road' without written permission. Our videos are protected by international copyright laws and any misuse will be prosecuted accordingly.