Lou Camin Nissart is the first of its kind in France: a Grande Randonnée, a top-category hiking trail, that goes around a town in a loop, similar to what the périphérique ring road does in Paris, only for hikers.
And with far more pretty views, since the town in question is Nice, the scenic capital of the French Riviera. The first stage of this new trail alone combines wild landscapes…
… with the picturesque …
… the urban scenic …
… and, inevitably, the urban not-so-scenic.
“Inevitably” because the geography of Nice requires the trail to pass through the city’s inner suburbs.
There is no southern route around the town and its suburbs, and there will never be one until man can be taught to walk on water.
The stretch through the town centre itself, at any rate, has clearly been designed to be one of the highlights of the trip: the final act, the grand climax rather than a tedious epilogue of the trail if you follow it – as recommended – counterclockwise from the port.
There are plenty of things to see when you walk down the Promenade des Anglais and pass by the old town streets near the Cours Saleya.
For most of its route, however, the trail intends to familiarize you with Nice by guiding you past and across the hills on the town’s mountainous periphery.
Lou Camin Nissart – incidentally, also the first hiking route with a name that has been derived from the local variation of Provencal – features a lot of climbs and descents, right from the moment when you leave downtown Nice.
That, too, is an inevitable consequence of the city’s geography – albeit a more welcome one, since the climbs are manageable and provide you with plenty of photo opportunities.
You can expect much gain for little pain.
The Lou Camin Nissart is 42 km long and is best divided into 4 stages. Although in principle you are free to start and stop wherever you like – it is a loop, after all –, following the four-stage scenario will make it easier for you to arrange the daily logistics of your hikes, since trailheads and end points have been located near bus stops and suburban train stations.
And here is another advantage of the recommended route: just as the Promenade des Anglais makes for a suitably grand finale, the scenic port of Nice provides the perfect overture.
From the port, follow the grand sweep to the left of the Quai du Commerce, the Boulevard Pilatte and the Boulevard Lorrain before turning right into the Sentier du Littoral for a visit of the magnificent seascape around the Cap de Nice, the city’s southernmost point.
After the experience of the port and the Prom, you will be surprised how wild and forbidding the coast of the French Riviera can feel – and all of that less than a couple of miles away from the genteel downtown.
Turn inland from here, using the succession of stairways up to the Boulevard Maeterlinck and eventually to the Route Forestiere to start your ascent of the city’s house mountain, the Mont Boron.
Continue northward in the direction of the 16th century Fort du Mont Alban, one of the highlights of the route …
… not least because its viewing platform offers magnificent panoramas over the Rade de Villefranche and the coastal village of Villefranche-sur-Mer.
From here, the trail continues past the Col de Villefranche towards the Mont Vinaigrier, passing the Parc du Vinaigrier on your right hand side.
You need not worry too much about orientation and hiking maps: most of the trail is very well signposted, and you will be all right if you simply follow the yellow-and-red balisage.
Just behind the entrance of the Parc du Vinaigrier, however, the markings become less frequent and more erratic, so you are more or less on your own – which is not a major problem, since we are now beginning our descent back to town anyway.
Walk down the stairway on your left hand side and, at the bottom, turn right into the asphalted Chemin du Cal du Mont Gros and then right again into the busy Boulevard Bischoffsheim.
After a stretch of approx. 200 metres, take a left turn into Avenue Teiras and follow a succession of stairways – eventually passing an Elementary School on your right – to the Boulevard Virgil Barel from where Tramway line 1 (direction Henri Sappia) will take you back to Nice town centre.
As you can tell from the large number of links which refer you to older posts on our blog, we were already somewhat familiar with certain sections of the new trail, and there are several other sub-trails further west on the Camin’s itinerary – alongside the Canal de Gairaut and around Aspremont – that we had also visited.
Alternatively to hiking the Camin from start to finish, you might therefore opt to concentrate a four-day hiking trip to Nice on four individual highlights from the trail. This would allow you to cut out the connecting stretches that have been merely inserted to stitch the trail together.
There appear to be quite a few of those, particularly on the western part of the route much of which only seems to serve the purpose of taking the hikers down from the mountains and back to civilization.
You may find that, in the case of the hiking trails around Nice, an à la carte approach actually provides better value than the menu.
This is not to say that we want to discourage anyone from hiking on the Camin Nissart. But perhaps it is better to dip in and dip out than to go for the omnibus edition.
Stage One of the trail, at any rate, is a worthwhile experience in its own right, a full menu de degustation that gives you a good idea of what the local landscape can offer.
You can do this stage in one full day – provided you start early – or in two half-day trips, with the coastal path around Cap Nice providing a good cutoff point.
If you want more information about the trail including a map, you can download the official brochure here.
