French Alps 2005

Wednesday - Sunshine and storms.

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Kid was up at six this morning, his GPZ had been overheating in Geneva so he had it in bits to top up the reservoir and check out why the cooling fan wasn't working.

Don't drink it all Kid, its meant for the bike!

The fault appeared to be just a wire off the thermostat, so after bypassing it and topping it up with Evian water (now that should make it go! :) it was time for breakfast.

Breakfast wasn't that bad actually (its difficult to get bread and jam wrong) so after a good filling of tea, coffee, French bread and jam we packed up ready for the road.

I put the GPS in its mount, switched on and tried to load the 'Route Grand Alps', it wouldn't load, it said it didn't match the maps, Arghhhhh!

Back to the log cabin, I got the mini laptop out and re calculated the route and maps to both Dave's and my GPS's, this time both worked fine but whether we would go exactly where I had original planned, only time would tell...

Within a few miles of leaving Thonon we were on super roads, passing through deep gorges with white water rivers running alongside. The first pass, Col des Gets (5278ft) passed by without a noticeable peak, and we eventually dropped down in to Cluses.

Coming out of Cluses the GPS routed us via the D119 instead of the D4. Of all the roads I remember this section most vividly, it was narrow and steep with tight, blind hairpins. Between the edge of the road and a shear drop of a 1000ft was at times just a tiny wall... as the days went by we did get used this sort of thing, but it was certainly a shock the first time!

But we survived and made it to the restaurant at the top of the Col de la Colombière where we stopped for fresh coffee and hot crepes.

Looking North the way we had come from the top of Col de la Colombiere, 1613m high

And the view south, with two of our bikes in the foreground, just beautiful!

After the Colombiere pass we road over the Col des Aravis at 1486m and the Col des Saisies at 1650m. Sorry, no pictures as we didn't stop and there wasn't any obvious peak.

Just before the Cormet de Roselend we found a very nice cafe bar called Auberge le Meraillet at the side of Lac (lake) de Roselend where Kid introduced us to the delights of Lipton's Iced tea!.

The top of Cormet de Roselend 1968m - 6456ft high, John H, Dave S, Patto, Gee and Dave J

Looking south from Cormet de Roselend, just more and more mountains, this just has to be heaven!

It was now 4.30 in the afternoon, and we needed somewhere for the night. Bourg-Saint-Maurice was just 20k south so it was the obvious choice. After an easy ride down, the GPS guided us to the tourist information, but it had been relocated temporarily to the railway station. As it happened she couldn't help us anyway, she had no phone!

Back on the road Patto point us to the Hotel Autantic on the outskirts of town. It was a great choice, secure underground parking and a swimming pool!

So after a quick shower it was in to the pool complete with Jacuzzi type water jet, fantastic after a hot day in the saddle!

As we were enjoying the pool, outside it was looking increasingly like rain, after about an hour we got the lot, thunder, lightning, wind and torrential rain!

Storm video download 2.5mb

The storm passed as soon as it came so a little later we took a walk back in to town and found a very good Pizza restaurant just too the left of the railway station

A successful first day in the mountains with 120 miles covered, this is the first day's route in yellow.

From the GPS's stored trail points: this one is 120 miles long, (it's not really as spiky as it looks :)

Garmin trail and waypoints download for today

And tomorrow, just more mountains as we head further south...

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