Race & Gadget Report: Les Bosses de Provence, September 2025

Les Bosses de Provence is a series of walking and cycling events in September with routes up to 164 km. I’ve just returned from a week-long cycling tour of the area, based in La Ciotat, that also took in most of the 164km route of the day of the Sportive on 21 September. 

These are mass participation events, usually called Gran Fondos or Cyclosportives. I called them…’A test of my cycling gadgets’, and here are the results along with a story of my week and ‘race’.

The route

The general geography of the area covers the Massif de la Sainte-Baume, the Parc national des Calanques, among others, ancient mountains significantly eroded. It’s not too far from more famous cycling areas – you can see Mont Ventoux and the Southern Alps on a clear day. Toulon and St Tropez are further East for those interested in that exotic mix of nudist beaches and naval history.

There is oddly conflicting information all over the web about the exact route and distances of the courses, to the point where it seems a bit shambolic. However, the experience on the day was of a safely marshalled and well-organised event, with dangerous sections closed to cars for the race.

It’s a good route, and I was surprised I’d never heard of it. I suppose there are many similar and better ones all over France and in the Alps.

The road surface is good, and there are no effects of altitude (721m asl), but even in September, it can be hot, and temperatures on the day are 25-28 degrees Celsius, although cooler up the hill.

The route itself starts and finishes in the outskirts of Marseille in southern France. Beautiful coastal views exist to the West, entering La Ciotat, especially around Cassis (of Creme de Cassis fame). Progressing inland, there are very large hills, which some probably call small mountains, and also high plateaus around the Paul Ricard F1 Circuit, which the route passes close to.

My favourite descent of the race was La Col d’Espigouiler (highlighted below), a closed road section with numerous switchbacks. It’s over 11km long with modest altitude gains/descents of over 500m, which probably explains why it’s never been in the Tour de France.  The views from the top, looking down into Marseille, are stunning, well, if you turn the other way, they are stunning too. It’s not quite the same beauty as in the Alps, but no one was complaining, for sure.

Overall, it’s a good event. There are nowhere near as many people as on other 100-milers I’ve completed, like Ride London. But that’s probably a good thing.

I’d recommend it if you are in the area, but it’s probably not worth the trip just for that event. There are many other nice climbs and rides to explore that easily warrant 5 or 6 days combined with a beach or family holiday.

I’ll talk a bit now about some of my other cycling days, but with much more focus on the tech used and some of the things that went wrong.

Gadget and Mechanical Problems

This was perhaps the most issues I’d ever had on a bike trip. They covered both mechanical and electronic annoyances.

Luckily, we had a few days of cycling before the race, and I identified and fixed all my issues before riding issue-free on the day itself.

Bike Transport & Assembly

On the way out, the lovely X-ray scanning lady at Heathrow informed me that my pedal spanner and torque wrench set could not go on the plane. Oh dear, they are kinda important. She said I had to throw them away or check them in as hand luggage. I pleased ignorance, smiled quite a bit, and her boss eventually said it was Ok. I’m not entirely sure why it never occurred to me that an eight-inch pedal spanner could be considered an offensive weapon…fair enough! I thought the torque wrench set would be OK, nope. Maybe they thought I planned to take the door off to get to the pilot? IDK.

Assembling the bike in the house was a doddle. Well, it was until it came to tightening the handlebar stem bolts. I was very proud of myself as I’d noted all the torque settings for my bike in advance, and I even knew that after tightening one bolt, then the other, it’s best to return to the first bolt in case the metal has moved slightly. I repeated that way too many times and sheared off one of the bolts. Grrr. I consider myself quite handy at fixing things, but for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a way to get the sheared-off bit out. My usual party-piece trick of a piece of washing-up glove to add friction shoved in the hole didn’t work.

I was delighted and somewhat surprised by the proximity of a bike shop that could do the job immediately. Yet, I was very disappointed that the guy managed to do what I had utterly failed at in the space of 5 minutes. He used a long, pointy thing to tease the sheared bolt out. France 1, England 0.

Inner tubes

The next day, we had a fun ride taking in the coast. Despite the obligatory fun, I took riding too seriously and was told to chill out and admire the view. I did as instructed. It was a nice view. However, I also neglected to look where I was going, and French roadsides have a habit of suddenly adding a pavement kerb to the hard shoulder you’re riding on. Luckily, I saw it at the last minute and managed a half-hearted bunny hop. It kinda worked except the rear wheel hit something on landing and served up a pinch flat. Jeez. That’s 5 punctures in the space of 4 weeks, not previously having had one for over a year.

This last month has changed my view of tubeless tyres, which I had been slagging off somewhat.  I’ll keep to my TPU tubes but also keep my opinions to myself for fear of tempting fate into giving me yet another puncture.

Now, of course, replacing an inner tube is easy. I had two spares and managed a speedy 5-minute turnaround, slipping in a nice pink latex one (you can make your own joke there). Except then I noticed that I could see the pink tube through the tyre sidewall. It was a Michelin pro tyre of some sort that an overzealous Sigma Sports shop assistant convinced me to buy a few years back. I hadn’t used it that much, but there it was a paper-thin, worn-out sidewall. I was pretty glad I used the pink inner as I wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.

As it wasn’t safe to ride on, I went back to the same bike shop as the previous day, the guy was still pleased to see me, phew! I bought a GP5000, though probably should have got a 28mm one rather than a 25mm. Oh well, it makes virtually zero difference. Anyway, as the Michelin tyre was a bit crap, I’d now make the holiday score France 1, England 1. Although, as the replacement was German (Conti), maybe they should get a point too?

Continental GP5000 Review – You Definitely NEED These – Conti Grand Prix Tire – Tyre

Brake blocks

Off we went again, rejoining the route to Mont Caume from Col du Corps de Garde. It was also my birthday, so the previous night’s beer probably made this climb harder than it actually was. Though my memory is of something harder than the climb profile below, suggests. The road surface, however, was awful so I reckon that cost 10watts, or at least that’s how it felt to me. So it was a PITA to go up what was effectively a glorified track and then actually quite dangerous coming down. And here’s where my next problem started.

I’m not the world’s best descender, but nor am I the worst. However, even I have the sense to realise that the tiredness and my birthday hangover all pointed towards a sensible approach and taking it easy. I was braking a lot on the way down (rim brakes, sorry). To make matters worse, I had my Hunt 36 carbon wheels, which I like. However, their carbon braking surface isn’t great in the wet, nor in the dry, nor is it great with sub-optimal, worn-out pads. That’s what I had. Sub-optimal pads, ie they didn’t work. I had to stop halfway down as my hands were tired from over-braking! I eventually got to the bottom and felt the wheel…yikes, it was hot. I also checked out my brake pads…there basically weren’t any of them left.

So, that meant the next day’s mechanical job was to find replacement carbon brake pads. And that’s harder than you think. I eventually found some and almost refused to pay the €41.40 asking price. Yes, you read that right (proof below). I had no choice. That now makes the score Switzerland 1 (Swiss Stop), France another 1 and England 0; or England minus-41 if you include the price. I still haven’t recovered from the shock of paying that. On the positive side, they work really well; from then on, I could stop when going downhill. Handy as the race was the next day.

Electronics

I had my Apple Watch for phone (calls and texts), Garmin Forerunner 970 mainly to keep my Garmin Connect stats up to date, Whoop because I like the app, Garmin HRM 600 and Wahoo Roam 3 because I like a bike computer I can actually use. I obviously had my Assioma Pro RS dual-sided power pedals for power, but I also had a Magene P505 power meter crankset. Just because it was on the bike. Having two power meters is just greedy, I know. It helps me go twice as fast, I think.

Garmin Connect Plus is a success – Garmin doubles down on its commitment, hints at LTE

Assioma: These just worked and didn’t need charging at all. The only mini problem was that, for safety, I put them in travel mode before leaving home. Luckily, I remembered to bring a charger with me, as that is how you wake them at your destination.

The Apple Watch fared surprisingly well. My only issue was that I didn’t have a European roaming tariff on its separate data plan. This minor omission meant the watch was useless without my iPhone. The sole purpose of it was to leave the iPhone behind and not break it. Useless. (Note: Apparently this is a wider ‘thing’, your domestic data plan for Watch will not workout when out of the country…that’s rubbish).

Oh…paying for stuff as well. It did that very well. But then so could the Garmin.

Whoop, just worked.

I had Garmin Forerunner 970 battery issues. It seemed to get through more juice than I expected. Thus, on the first day, I could not record with it as all the juice was lost in my bag on the plane. On subsequent days, as you can see below, the battery lives were lower than expected, coming in at below 20 hours and as low as 14 hours.

I used SatIQ and AOD, but for some reason, I once set the display brightness to 2/3, which probably explains why the battery life was lower than expected. #UserError?

The Wahoo roam was vital for each day’s cycling and generally performed issue-free. However, I paid particular attention to screen readability and the ability to route and re-route, the first being an issue that readers continually raise.

The sun was very bright every day. I had two pairs of sunglasses, one fairly dark and the other fairly clear (15%). The 15% one had no issues at all; however, with the darker glasses, I had to turn the brightness up on Roam 3 to read it.

Turning to the routing. We had a planned route pre-loaded every day of the week onto our devices. Mine were on the Roam. Plans changed, routes changed and morphed during the day. The key thing that I had to do where Roam struggled was to stop a route and then route back to the start of the day. Not a difficult task in itself, but I had to do it using the Di2 top buttons whilst riding relatively quickly behind someone on the wrong side of the road (France). The button combinations weren’t easy, and I invariably had to resort to the one finger of my left hand glove that’s worn through to get a quick and easy touch on the screen.

Take Out

Some great cycling, but not entirely stress-free.

I remain unconvinced that it makes sense to take your own bike on a cycling holiday, hiring must be easier.