Les Carroz, France

Four of us made the trip out to the French Alps in July 2008. Simon, Mark, Warren and me. Destination: Les Carroz - Warren has a place there high up, nearest city is Cluses.

So, here we are (minus me who's behind the camera) on our first day as we tried to follow the "Tour du Mole" which, in typical French fashion seemed to have an incomplete route signage, causing us to ride twice as far as we needed to in the pouring rain.

Anyway, despite the rain we had a good day, excellent lunch stop where we managed a beer and a cheese baguette, then a little later we found the route and had a really pleasant ride over a small mountain, dropped down to the valley and again, after another route mistake found our way into Cluses where the rain became heavier, along the main road out for about a mile then the painful pull up to Araches where we left our bikes at Maurices place and borrowed his van to get to Warrens apartment a bit further up the mountain.

Every morning was a slow start, Friday we arrived back at Maurices at around 11am in glorious sunshine, a bit different to the previous day, then, after taking Maurice and companian Dabber up the mountain for their ride, we set off to conquer the Col de la Colombiere at about 1145.

What a brilliant climb this was, it started almost before we realised, the gradient quite gentle then rising a bit more, we then came across melted tarmac then even worse, a road gang relaying the road - our tyres sunk into the tarmac and made the going difficult as we picked up every kind of debris from the road surface.

Speed rose in the shade where the tarmac was ok. First (and only) main village is the very picturesque Le Reposoir (second image above), we took our time through here then carried on our toil towards the summit.

Wow! We made the top in about 1.5 hours and stayed together for most of the climb, had some lunch on top then descended to Le Grand Bournand, then swung a right to follow the valley road to Bonneville. This was an amazing descent - a very small gradient, estimated at around 1 in 30 which allowed us to whizz downhill for miles. Out of Bonneville to Ayze then the climb back to Araches, the back way which resulted in a burn-up with a couple of local cyclists'.

After a superb dinner at Maurices we retired to ride up the Jeux Plane on Saturday. However, our plans changed as Maurice was keen to go to Annecy. We jumped in his van with the bikes and drove there, parked up, left Dabber to sample the local beer and started a ride around the lake. This was looking like a poor day for cycling, weather was hot, our route around the lake was about 24 miles, flat. But...we found the Col de la Forclaz so the intrepid four climbed the col, left Maurice to carry on around the lake. This climb was shorter than the Colombiere, at around 11Km (Colombiere was 16Km) and not so high, but it was much steeper and was thus a much harder climb, added to which we already had tired legs!

The top was rewarding, it really brought out the best in people with some very colourful exclamations as they each appeared over the top.

Down we went the other side, met Maurice and bashed for about 16Km's along the cycle path that runs alongside Lake Annecy. Excellent facility used by loads of people but I found it boring - dead flat. That was the end of our riding, we finished the holiday in a pretty good restaurant in Les Carroz on Saturday night.

Col de Jeux Planes next time...

...and why was it called "Cold Shower"? A well kept secret....