Up and over to Bourg

We started the day in Beaufort, having driven from Evian in order to ‘hit’ the alps again. We bought cheese of the same name, the summer variety, which is made from summer pasture grazed cows. Sampling the summer and winter options showed us just what a difference that makes. Summer has a richer, stronger flavour.

There was a classic car rally coming through from Evian, en route for L’Alpe d’Huez that day, so we planned to intercept it.

The cars were built during the period 1950-80 and would be worth watching but unfortunately things were complicated and the rally drivers seemed to turn it into The Italian Job. They appeared in small numbers throughout the day in various random places, usually going in the opposite direction to that expected!

The classic road over to Bourg-St-Maurice, Cormet de Roselend, was signposted as shut but I assumed this was because of the rally. So we drove up, until we reached an opportunity to turn off to the west, as it was shut at the top due to a landslip. There we met the first big group of bikers. There are many of these in the alps.

On the way up, some of the Italian Job were driving down and I have no idea what route they took to Val-d’Isère for their lunch stop.

Our good fortune was that the turn-off at Barrage de Roselend, took us over the minor road of Col du Pré and just before the top there was a magnificent view of Mont Blanc. Right there too, was a great chalet/cafe and we just had to stop to admire the view and drink morning coffee.

The really nice lady spoke very good English and soon had the measure of my French. We were able to order large coffees with hot milk and she can really produce nice ones. She admitted, when challenged, that she wasn’t French at all but Norwegian. That challenge was on the basis of her English diction rather than her quality coffee.

Closer…

Mont Blanc is huge, at about 4,800m and rises high above everything else.

We continued, with a slight idea from earlier research, that if all went well we would ‘hit some gravel’, and slowly made our way up to Cormet d’Areches which is high at 2,108m. We left the rest of the four wheeled vehicles behind and only a few bikes with correct tyres, came up the steep gravel and stone road.

It was great to be at the top although a few cars had driven up the gravel from the other side (easier). 

We had a wander around at the top but the ground is boggy and the streams in spate. This is because the snow melt only really started in June this year.

Then it was down a very long way, into the valley and a couple of nights at the nice site at Bourg-St-Maurice