Sabbatical Bulletin No. 10 - La Route des Grandes Alpes

At last, back to les Cantalus and a proper WiFi connection.

I was going to do a post a day, but now with a week’s worth of news that would be a bit heavy I fear; so here’s the concise version.

To do the Route des Grandes Alpes requires wheels. It goes from Geneva to Menton so as we had to be home for a couple of things we drove back to Elmdon.

On Monday Lucy graduated – here she is looking very fine indeed -

Then we set off for the Alps. First a dash to Burgundy, followed by a drive along the wintrily named Autoroute Blanche, took us to the start at Thonon on Lake Geneva.

Day 1 took us over two major cols, the Colombière and Aravis. The Aravis is rather spoilt in comparison with my previous visit in 1999 – shops selling tatty souvenirs and shopkeepers presuming you can’t speak French. But they lead to Beaufort – here it is next morning

source of a hard cheese beloved of Richard and the launch pad for the spectacular Cormet de Roselend. This is the pass from the Beaufortain to the Tarentaise only finished in the Sixties. Here’s a taste –

 – (there’s a similar picture from 1999 of the first SAAB in the same place). And this is what the cows produce

We managed a good walk

amid beautiful flowers

and here is one of the “proof” pictures.

(We took one per col – the full collection can be viewed on application.)

The Route goes over all the high passes so on the way to the Col d’Iseran we passed though Val d’Isère

The Iseran is the highest paved pass in the Alps (about 9,000 feet).

This part of France is border country and has many forts, such as this one

which we passed as Sarah zipped down the Arc valley to the next two passes, the Telegraphe and the Galibier.

Since the Cormet de Roselend we had heard marmottes but not managed to spot any. But this noisy whistling chap on the Galibier was eventually located

got him? - I think we are vindicated in not seeing them.

The Galibier is very beautiful on the North side, green and black

but shortly after this the weather turned and our descent to Briançon was in a rainstorm.

Nice little hotel (les Chausées, over 100 years in the same family) there, but strong rain again next day. The Izoard was also not open to powered traffic, being reserved for cyclists till noon (though why even a hardened cyclist would want to go up in the pouring rain was, as Sarah remarked, a puzzle) we by-passed it and after the Col de Vars we reached the Gorges de la Bachelard and the Col de la Cayolle.

I have driven or cycled a lot of this route before and so was able to regale Sarah with stories such as the "Mossman deviation" and its consequences for the ascent of the Cormet de Roselend, but this part I had never traversed before. They lived up to and exceeded my anticipation. The gorges do not photograph easily but we did find some much more photogenic marmottes – here’s one sunning himself

And then, real joy, at the top we walked up to the Col de la Petite Cayolle -

- there it is and you can see Sarah walking up it – really! I shall not say what was the other side – it was truly inviting. The Cayolle was my highlight of the whole trip. We also saw so many marmottes we became blasé about them – here’s another, scampering up the hillside.

I need to stay brief. Which is difficult for such a spectacular trip. So I shall go next day via the perched village of Roubion

to the Col de Turini

At the top of the Turini we encountered some fellow tourists on the Route (who we had been passing and repassing)

and we drove round the Authion, a sort of natural fort, controlling the entry to France from Italy. Reinforced in 1860 when Savoie and half of the Comté of Nice became French, the Maginot Line of the 1930s resulted in more fortifications there.

Down we swept to Sospel

– very Italian, surprise, surprise for a town which was part of Piedmont till 1860 – but rather Baroque with it.

And finally to journey’s end at Menton and the Mediterranean,

following which we were able to pick Richard at Nice airport on Sunday 25th

The total journey was about 350 miles longer than the normal Elmdon – Ampus route; and took four days longer, so it’s not going to be a replacement itinerary. But in sum it was spectacular and refreshing.