Towards Savoie

We stayed on the motorway, which for us is unusual in France but we have experienced the traffic calming in the towns and villages. A direct and fast journey was planned and achieved, with a nice morning stop and appropriate accompaniments.

We arrived at Saint-Jean-de-Chevelu which is a little west of Lac du Bourget, the huge lake which has Aix- les-Bains on its eastern shore. We went to a previously researched campsite, Camping des lacs. This is a lovely spot of about 100 places for a mix of tents, camper-vans and smaller motor homes. There are also cabins and some that were a bit like shepherd’s huts. It’s situated next to two small lakes (surprise!) and there’s a ring of small mountains around. These would have been peri-glacial lakes 🥸 back at the last ice age and have now become a joint playground and eco place. You can swim, fish and respect ‘nature’ here but need to get in the right part at the right time to do what’s allowed.

A lady pecheur told us of carp and we had seen and heard a huge fish jump out of the water (and back in) when we were there the previous evening but there was no evidence that she’d managed to catch anything.

The campsite hosts were really happy to engage in my French ‘conversation’ and it’s really useful when people do. I just blurt out what I want to say, in what I think are roughly the correct words and it usually works.

We set ourselves up for “one night, or maybe two” but it ended-up being three. The first two were très tranquille but the last was with a full site and it was a little more noisy. The next day would be Pentecost (Ascension I think) and that’s a French ‘oliday. It’s a Thursday and most people ‘Pont’ across to le weekend by taking Friday off too.

So there were kids playing out late and early and having a great time in the building heat. There’s a few days of very hot weather on the way.

We bought strawberries at what we would find to be a great price, at a roadside stall in the village and it didn’t take long for the guy in the boulangerie to sell us some cheese as well as the bread we had gone for. He also did his best to sell ice cream for a shop in another village.

We are now in shorts. At last we are getting England 2025 type spring weather! To celebrate we went to the lake (a 2 minute walk) and got in from the pontoon that’s shared with fisher people. The water is murky but not cold and we had a dip.

We had a slightly longer swim the next day, again in just our budgies and bikini, whilst a couple of blokes spent a long time donning wetsuits and caps, before heading across the lake at a very leisurely breaststroke. At least I can manage crawl in my birthday suit although not all the way across. I’m very wary of giant carp.

There’s an easy walk around the two lakes and later we would snap a pic from the road over the col high above.

Camp cooking is as sophisticated as at home, although there we don’t go for boil-in-the-bag rice. It’s handy when camping as the rice gets everywhere!