The finest driving roads on the French Riviera

There are two ways to see the French Riviera: from a sunlounger, or from behind a wheel. The first is very pleasant. The second is the one my clients still talk about a year later.

The region has a rare quality: within an hour’s drive you go from the water’s edge to a corniche three hundred metres above it, then to a village clinging to a cliff where nothing has happened in six centuries. Here are the four roads I genuinely send people on, with the car that suits each, because it isn’t the same car for every route.

This is the region’s legendary drive, and it’s really three roads stacked on the mountainside. The Basse Corniche hugs the sea through Villefranche, Beaulieu and Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat: the slowest, the busiest, and the loveliest late in the day when the light skims the water. The Moyenne Corniche runs above it through Èze, and remains my default choice, the best balance of pace and view. The Grande Corniche, the highest, is the most spectacular: a plunging view over the whole coast and, on a clear day, as far as Italy.

My advice: go up on the Grande and come back down on the Basse. You’ll have seen everything, and you’ll finish at the water’s edge. Which car? A convertible, no argument, it’s the one road where I always push for an open top, because the view is as much above you as beside you.

My favourite, and by far the least predictable for anyone who only knows the Riviera postcard. Over some thirty kilometres between the Cannes area and Saint-Raphaël, the road follows a coast of red rock plunging straight into the Mediterranean, punctuated by one cove after another.

You don’t drive fast here, and that isn’t the point: you stop. Le Trayas, the Pointe de l’Aiguille at Théoule, the small coves where you can swim without seeing a soul in September. It’s also the only road on the Riviera I recommend driving in both directions: the light on that red rock is nothing alike in the morning and late afternoon. Which car? A nimble sports car rather than a very large SUV, the road is narrow and the bends are tight.

When clients have done the sea and want something else, I send them inland, and it’s often the day they talk about most. You leave the coast, climb to Saint-Paul-de-Vence, carry on towards Tourrettes-sur-Loup, follow the Gorges du Loup upstream and finish at Gourdon, clinging to its cliff, with a view running all the way back down to the sea.

Allow the whole day, not half of it: the road is slow and that’s exactly right. And come out of season. In August the hilltop villages are saturated and all the charm evaporates in the car park queue.

A case apart, because the real beauty isn’t on the main road, which, in summer, is a traffic jam with a view. What I recommend: take the beach road towards Ramatuelle, climb to the village, drop back down to Gassin and push on to the Col de Collebasse. Within twenty minutes you’ve left the crowd entirely. And if you’re coming from Sainte-Maxime, the corniche around the gulf is worth the detour at sunset on its own.

Which car? Here a Mini Moke or a small convertible makes far more sense than a supercar. The peninsula roads are narrow, parking is scarce, and nobody has ever been impressed by someone stuck reversing in a Ramatuelle side street.

• Drive early. Between 8 and 10am the corniches are yours; at 3pm in August they’re queues.
• Checks are frequent on the corniches, and the region has no particular indulgence for hire plates. The pleasure is in the road, not in the number on the dial.
• Fill up before heading inland: petrol stations thin out quickly once you leave the coast.
• Hilltop villages park badly. I often send a driver up in parallel: you drive the beautiful road, he takes the car, and you have lunch without thinking about parking.
• Out of season, everything is better. May, June, September, October: the same light, an empty road.