San Remo Cycling — Colle d'Oggia Mountain Loop

The first 20 km of this route gave no indication of what was coming. From San Remo the road follows the Ligurian coast east -- flat, fast, hugging the sea past Santo Stefano al Mare and on toward Imperia. It felt like a rest day warm-up. Then the road turned inland, and everything changed.

The climbing begins gently through olive groves and terraced hillside villages, but the gradient builds steadily as you gain height. The road narrows and quietens -- by the time you are committed to the upper slopes of Colle d'Oggia there is almost no traffic at all, just the sound of the bike on the tarmac. The climb is 13.2 km at 6.9% average, a sustained Category 1 effort that rises from the valley floor to 1,118 metres. When I rode this the views from the upper section were extraordinary -- the Ligurian Alps in every direction and the Mediterranean reduced to a thin blue line far below.

The summit felt genuinely remote. This is not a tourist road, and I had it almost entirely to myself. The descent drops through the hinterland on fast, sweeping roads -- through villages that feel unchanged in decades -- before eventually returning to the coast and the final flat kilometres back into San Remo. WorldTour teams train on these roads throughout the winter, and having ridden it I can see why -- it is serious climbing on beautiful, quiet roads.