The Alps

On the way to St Tropez I spent some time travelling through the French Alps.

I wanted to see some of the famous places and alpine passes the tour de France passes through.

I did a lap from Grenoble, Alp d'Huez, over col de Croix de fer, over col du Galibier, then down to Briancon.

Huez is one of the more famous tour stages, Lance won a 14 km time trial there a few years ago. It rises from about 700m to 1700m over 14km with 24 switch back hair pins and a few ski lifts to negotiate, might also be fun to do some skiing there in Winter. I did see a few pro teams training as well as heaps of tourists taking on the mountain...

Galibier was 2645m above sea level and as you can see from the Photos well above the snow line. The tour comes through here in mid July only a few weeks away, it was well below 10 degrees, there were still quite a few tourists riding their bikes over the mountains, I would love to come back soon with my bike and a bit more time....perhaps one day to do la Marmotte race which is basically a 176km loop from Alp d'huez over this loop and back, only about 5000m vertical!! perhaps a little more training required for that one!!

Afterwards It was back down the hill to Nice to spend the night with my Great Uncle Charlie who lives in Antibes and then meet up with the guys on Alfa to get to St Tropez for the Giraglia Race....