Touring with On Foot Holidays, we start in the beautiful city of Nice, where we gorge on salade Niçoise and pink-toned, Mediterranean red mullet atop lush ratatouille. Hopping on a train up to La Brigue, with paper-wrapped socca (a local chickpea bread) under our arm, our tour-proper begins.

Once we get to La Brigue we relinquish our luggage, which from here on in is transported for us between hotels, ready in our rooms when we arrive at each place. The hotels themselves are a true taste of rural France – think shuttered windows, roughly-hewn walls and traditional, local food. We stay at the Fleur des Alpes, which is all of these things, overlooking La Brigue’s tiny town square on one side, and the local river, skirted by kitchen gardens, on the other. There is the option of a hike today, but we give our afternoon up to carafes of cool Provencal rosé instead.

The next morning we start our first proper hike, and it’s not for the faint-hearted. We climb high above La Brigue and reach the gorgeous little town of Tende. Here, we grab cups of hot coffee in the square, then climb back over the mountain and down again to La Brigue for dinner at our hotel (and more of that crisp, pale rosé). On day four we undertake a monster eight-hour hike through the Alps. It’s challenging, but breathtakingly beautiful.

At the apex of rocky mountains we pass through quiet, multicoloured villages not accessible by road. We find groups of walkers drinking Champagne with their feet dangling in the mineral-rich footbaths boasted by most villages in this area. We stop and eat our baguettes, prepared by the hotel – stuffed with chèvre, prosciutto, tomatoes and olive oil – in a pink-toned town square at another mountaintop town, and fill our water bottles from the fountain there. Our final stop of the day is our highest yet: a humble stone gîte high above the mountaintop town of Saorge.

The gîte is run by Virginie, and she makes us a simple homemade dinner of herbed quiche with cheese and ham, salad and her own bread. Afterwards, she dishes out little glasses of thick set cream topped with sweet and tart, vivid-yellow Mirabelle plum compete, made with fruit she pickled from her garden that day – it’s the best thing we eat in the Alps. The next day, we wander around Saorge and pick up bread, cheese and saucisson for our lunch, plus a few tender, sweet peaches for dessert. We walk all the way to Breil-sur-Roya, where we hungrily devour our picnic with the cool waters of the river dancing about our tired, submerged limbs.

The next day it’s up into the mountains again, walking on tracks older than roads, where drovers once transported their cattle from town to town. It’s warm, but rainy, and we find ourselves by a pale blue alpine stream around four hours into our walk, where we stop for a skinny dip in the bracing waters – not a soul passes us while we’re there. We arrive at our accommodation, an exquisite, aged church called La Chapelle Saint Gervais. The owner, Pascale, is unloading crates of vegetables from her car and negotiating with the local forager for his chanterelle mushrooms, which will become our dinner. Everything is organic here, and as local as possible. At dinner we’re seated at a long wooden table with Pascale’s other guests, and eat plates of milky burrata with tomatoes, followed by pasta with cream and chanterelles (we’re right on the Italian border here), and finished with rich, buttery tarte Tatin. She sends us on our way in the morning with stuffed baguettes; sweet, fruit-studded cakes and apples from her orchard.

Walking up an old, cobbled donkey path, we’re back in humble surrounds now in the little village of Sainte-Agnès. We can see Menton from here – our final destination. On our last day we hike downwards into Menton itself, and to the Mediterranean Sea. Finishing on a high, on our final night, we book ourselves dinner at Mirazur in Menton – currently ranked third best restaurant on the World’s 50 Best list. We sip Champagne while gazing at the glittering Med, and eat swathes of silky roast beetroot topped with Oscietra caviar and cream. Then it’s umami-centric porcini tarts; soft mussels with basil sauce; and the magician-like experience of watching the cheese trolley unfold. The service is warm; impeccable. What a way to cap off this richly cultural and culinary adventure into this land of sea and mountain. As the sun sets over Menton and the Alps, we vow to return to this secret within the spotlight. delicious. attended the Alpes Maritimes self-guided walking tour courtesy of On Foot Holidays.