General information about the area

FranceBeyond (including ProvenceBeyond). Links on the home page to specific Provence topics – villages, history, sport, etc. Good place to start your research.
ProvenceWeb – Alpes-Maritimes villages
Haut Pays de Nice (one-man site)
Portail Vésubien – plenty of information about the places in the Vésubie valley.
Alpes Maritimes Département ProvenceWeb.

There’s plenty online about wolves in the Mercantour and ProvenceBeyond has a short summary in English.

Villages on our route

Rimplas ProvenceBeyond.
St-Martin-Vésubie ProvenceBeyond.
St-Martin-Vésubie ProvenceWeb.
la Bollène-Vésubie ProvenceBeyond.
la Bollène-Vésubie Main village site.
la Bollène-Vésubie ProvenceWeb.
Moulinet ProvenceWeb
Sospel ProvenceWeb.
Sospel Tourist office
Castellar ProvenceWeb.
Menton ProvenceBeyond.
Menton ProvenceWeb.

Accommodation

Not all the hotels we stayed in have web sites. I’ve listed here the ones that do, and some other hotels we considered as alternatives. All the places we stayed were of a standard typical of French 2-star hotels, with the Auberge Provençale in Sospel being the best of them.

We stayed in —

l’Hôtel Crillon in Nice
le Relais St Louis in St-Martin-Vésubie (fax +33 4 93 03 37 07). Alternative: la Bonne Auberge (tel. +33 4 93 03 20 49) — a smarter-but-duller looking place which didn’t reply to my enquiry.
le Grand Hôtel du Parc in la Bollène-Vésubie
les Trois Vallées at the Col de Turini (tel. +33 4 93 91 57 42). The alternatives, le Ranch (tel. +33 4 93 91 57 23) and les Chamois (tel. +33 4 93 91 57 42) were both closed at the time. Despite our experiences there, the Trois Vallées would seem to be easily the best choice. There are also hotels at the Camp d’Argent ski centre.
Auberge Provençale in Sospel. Note it is a short uphill walk from the town centre. I also had a friendly reply from the Hôtel de France, which is in the town centre (and on the main road). Next door is the Hôtel des Étrangers.