Trail de Cuers

The Trail de Cuers is a 30-kilometre trail race with 1,100 metres of elevation gain, starting from Cuers, a Provençal commune nestled in the Gapeau plain in the heart of the Var department. This event takes runners through the limestone hills of the Var hinterland, an authentic Mediterranean landscape of fragrant garrigue, luminous pine woods, and centuries-old olive groves, bathed in the generous sunshine of eastern Provence.

Cuers, a characterful town situated halfway between Toulon and Brignoles, is surrounded by an amphitheatre of wooded hills that form the natural playground for this race. The town, known for its olive-growing tradition and colourful Provençal markets, is the ideal starting point for exploring the rolling landscapes that stretch between the coastal plain and the first foothills of the Maures massif. The trails leave the village and rise quickly through the restanques — those dry-stone terraces that bear witness to the region's ancestral agriculture — before plunging into hills covered with holm oaks and Aleppo pines.

The Trail de Cuers course winds through Provençal garrigue in all its splendour. Rosemary, thyme, wild lavender, and cistus perfume the air as runners tread ochre-coloured earth trails lined with dry-stone walls. Views open onto a quintessentially Var panorama: to the east, the Maures massif unfurls its schist ridges covered in cork oaks; to the south, the Mediterranean glitters beyond the Hyères plain; to the north, the limestone cliffs of the Sainte-Baume stand out against the horizon. Shaded woodland passages offer welcome relief, especially during spring editions when the Provençal sun can already beat down fiercely.

With 1,100 metres of elevation gain spread over 30 kilometres, the Trail de Cuers offers an engaging yet accessible profile, typical of Provençal hill trails. The climbs, often on stony paths sometimes rutted by Mediterranean rains, work the calves without ever reaching the extreme gradients of high mountains. The descents, on sometimes unstable limestone ground scattered with loose rocks, nonetheless demand constant vigilance. The terrain is varied: winding single tracks through woodland, wider firebreak trails along ridges, passages over rock slabs, and crossings of shaded valleys.

The Var is one of the richest departments in France for Mediterranean biodiversity, and the Trail de Cuers allows runners to appreciate this wealth in full. Runners may observe the typical garrigue fauna: the short-toed snake eagle soaring on thermals, the ocellated lizard basking on rocks, the Dartford warbler singing in rosemary bushes. The flora is equally remarkable, with wild orchids in spring, flowering asphodels, and pink cistus carpeting the hillsides. The Trail de Cuers embodies Provençal trail running at its finest: a human-scale race carried by southern hospitality, the scents of garrigue, and the incomparable light of the Midi — that light which painters sought from Cézanne to Matisse.