Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car

We had our “triptych” signed at the Italian dogana fifteen kilometres beyond the brow of the mountain, at San Dalmazzo di Tenda, crossing on to French soil three kilometres farther on. The French douane is at Breil, at the sixty-sixth kilometre stone beyond Cuneo, and at an elevation of less than three hundred metres above the sea. Here we delayed long enough to have the douaniers check off the number of the motor, the colour of the body work, the colour of the cushions and numerous other incidentals in order that the French government might not be mulcted a sou. “Everything in order. Allons! partez;” said the gold braided official, and again we were in France.

At Breil the road divides, one portion, following still the valley of the Roya, slopes down to Ventimiglia in twenty kilometres, the other, in forty kilometres, arriving at Nice via the valley of the Paillon.

It is not all down hill after Breil for, before Sospel is reached, seventeen kilometres away, one crosses another mountain crest by a fairly steep ascent and again, after Sospel, it rises to the Col di Braus – this time over the best of French roads – to an elevation of over one thousand metres.

From Sospel a spur road leads direct to Menton but the Grande Route leads straight on to Nice, shortly after to blend in with the old Route d’Italie, linking up Paris with the Italian-Mediterranean frontier, a straight away “good road,” the dream of the automobilist, for a matter of 1,086 kilometres.

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