I went to France's 'volcano country' to find out why it's one of cycling's best-kept secrets

Just when you think you’ve found a hidden gem of French mountain cycling, the Tour de France pitches up and announces it as a finish of the biggest stage of the first week – and one of the most fun stages of the whole three weeks.

Le Mont-Dore, a mountain town in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of the Massif Central, has never before played host to the great race in its 122-year history, yet here it is in 2025 as the finale of a madcap mountain route on Bastille Day, France’s biggest public holiday.

The day when French fans descend en masse to their beloved race, raise the tricolore to billow in the wind and cheer on a home favourite – often defiantly and usually in vain, as the one French Bastille Day winner since 2005 (Warren Barguil, 2017) implies.

Finding Mont-Dore

Rewind a little over 12 months and the scene in Mont-Dore isn’t auspicious. It’s mid-June 2024 and we’ve travelled almost two hours by car from our base in the Creuse region, from which we’ve been enjoying several rides in this under-utilised central area of the country, to find a damp and brooding Mont-Dore. The plan for the day? A 46km (26mi) loop that takes in some of the region's best roads.

At a little over 1,000m of altitude, the rain isn’t icy but is certainly what I’d call icy-adjacent – the sort that stings bare skin and leaves lingering after-effects - and photographer Joe and I are in no mood just yet to unload the bikes and head even higher, into the rafters of the Massif du Sancy.

Instead, we take refuge in one of the town’s numerous inviting bistros that emit a yellowy-orange glow, cutting through the dank grey.

We look on from our street-view vantage point as we order local dish truffade – an icon of Massif du Sancy cuisine.

The main ingredients are potatoes and cheese, and it used to be cooked in summer by shepherds in their mountain cabins (trufada is the local word for potato, hence the name).

The potatoes are sliced and browned in a pan, then the cheese – the local Cantal tomme – is added and cooked until it gets a bit crispy. Served with a green salad and cured meat, it’s precisely the food you want on a cold mountain day.

It would have been perfect as a mid-ride warmer, or a post-ride calorie revitaliser, but is more questionable as a prelude to turning the pedals.

As we tuck in, we’re aware time’s ticking on, but we’re waiting it out for sunny skies.

By dessert, which we skip, the rain’s easing, and with my stomach as heavy as a reinforced safe, an afternoon in the mountains beckons.

Despite leaden skies still enveloping the lower hills around the town and my body focused on digesting the rich, cheesy contents of my stomach, we have a job to do on the bikes.

We head up through the town and out, then east up the Col de la Croix Saint-Robert, but we’re barely past the climb sign when disaster strikes and Joe gets a bad puncture in his rear tyre. Then the heavy rain starts again.

So close are we to the car that we opt to soft-pedal back to it and attempt to fix the puncture when the rain eases – according to the forecast, it’s a matter of when, rather than if.

Another hour passes while the sky deposits the last of the day’s precipitation and we refuse to be tempted by a pompe aux pommes (an immense apple turnover).

It’s about three in the afternoon by the time we set off on the bikes for good and head all the way up to the 1,451m summit of Col de la Croix Saint-Robert (5.8km at 6.3%).

This stretch of road, over the top and down to Lac Chambon, will be tackled in reverse in the finale of stage 10 of the Tour.

Once in Mont-Dore, the final climb to its ski resort has a steep section of 8% over 3.3km.

It’s typical of the stage – short, punchy and not particularly worrisome in isolation, but when combined with a fistful of other category-two climbs, among many other ascents, all in quick succession, it’s a formidable parcours of 4,400m elevation.

Glacial pace

The smooth asphalt pooled with rainwater glistens in the emerging sunlight. It’d been a warm few days before this deluge and the heat absorbed by the tarmac now rises as steam.

The summit is a vast expanse of green undulating slopes, displaying its volcanic origin.

Puy de Sancy (1,885m), just west of here and where the Tour is heading, is the highest peak in the Massif Central, although the height that the race will hit (1,324m) is below that of Croix Saint-Robert.

At Puy de Sancy, two streams, the Dore and the Dogne, combine to form the Dordogne river, which flows through Mont-Dore and west to the Gironde estuary near Bordeaux and then the Atlantic.

Twisting down the mountain like a ribbon of spaghetti, the fast and technical descent is at odds with the gentle clattering of cow bells ringing in my ears.

A diversion from the descent into the Chaudefour Valley, a nature reserve since 1991, sees more of that thick stew of a mist drift slowly through the dense woodland, while the trickle of waterfalls breaks an otherwise unimpeachable silence.

On a brighter day, the southern tip of this detour by road offers wonderful views of a glacial valley, one of three in the Massif du Sancy.

While mountain bikes are forbidden, it’s a haven for walkers and climbers, though the 90m-tall Dent de la Rancune is infamous nationwide for its difficulty.

In this anticlockwise, circular loop, the town of Chambon-sur-Lac marks the halfway and most easterly point of the route.

Many people are either seaside or mountain types, but Chambon-sur-Lac satisfies everyone, with beaches on this lake in the hills. It’s a volcanic dam, formed after the eruption of the Tarteret volcano some 8,500 years ago.

This 60-hectare lake is a shallow six metres at its deepest and is a popular resting spot after outdoor activities in the mountains.

With the weather still proving far from beachy, we continue onwards and upwards, as we ascend the road west that would take us back to base in Mont-Dore.

A look over your shoulder offers the irresistible sight of Château de Murol, dominating the landscape high on its promontory. Historical reenactments circa 1425 of the life of its eponymous resident, Lord Guillaume de Murol, beckon inside its grounds.

Puy oh puy

By now the landscape has opened up again and we’re very much back in volcano land.

There are more such 'puy' – a local term in Auvergne for extinct volcanoes – than you can shake a stick at.

The name puy is derived from the Latin word podium, meaning ‘elevated place’ and is also seen in other languages in the cycling world, such as Italian (poggio, of Milan-San Remo fame), and Catalan (puig, as in Puig Major, the highest climb on Majorca).

The best known puy of the Auvergne, in cycling and general terms, is the Puy de Dôme, close to the city of Clermont-Ferrand and visible from certain vantage points around Mont-Dore despite being 50km away. It’s a young volcano in geological terms, created just 10,700 years ago.

A distinctive dome shape, it returned to the Tour de France in 2023 after a decades-long absence.

A railway built into the mountain’s road limits the space for a huge race like the Tour and the absence of fans on its upper slopes in the 2023 edition was keenly felt in a flat atmosphere.

Be aware, cyclists are forbidden from riding it aside from on select days of the year.

The road back to Mont-Dore never seems to peak, rather it meanders along idyllic roads with rolling climbs deep into the distance that we know we’re not climbing today.

Despite the late start and subpar June weather, these are roads that you just want to keep going on. Soon the tarmac must point back down towards Mont-Dore, and sure enough it does with a flying descent back to base.

At this point, after the chilliest of June rides, the right and proper thing to do would be to warm up in one of Mont-Dore’s thermal baths – this spa town is the most mountainous in Auvergne and its silica-rich waters are famed for their effect on rheumatic problems.

Time is getting on, however, after our hugely belated start, and we have to make tracks back to our Creuse lodgings.

These lesser-heralded mountain roads of the Auvergne might not have the name recognition or difficulty of their brethren in the French Alps and Pyrenees, yet, in their solitude, they have an exclusivity that’s hard to better.