Day 2 - Bring on the mountains!
Up nice and early. On the road by 9am. Collected a few supplies, filled the tank........again.
By 10am we're on the D902 (Route des Grande Alpes), its not long we come to the first pass, and I'm letting the GF drive first
Stopping at the top of Col de la Colombiere (1613m alt.),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_de_la_Colombi%C3%A8re found some of the white stuff still on the ground.
Where we've just driven up.
Starting our descent from Col de la Colombiere, you can see, which is a re-occuring sight on this route, safety barriers are for girls
Parked up checking the route in La Clusaz. Taking the wrong turn can add hours to your journey, and possibly ending up at the foot of a mountain pass which is closed.
And it's quite a pretty place, i'm sure you'll agree
Next up, Col des Aravis (1486m alt.). Where we stopped at the top for some food, and came across some Yeti beer. So got a bottle, rude not to!
The top of Col des Aravis was also when some angry French person started shouting at my car! Can only assume he was a driver of one of the cars we overtook coming up the pass......we weren't hanging around.
Mont Blanc in the distance
My turn to drive now
From there we headed towards Col des Saisies (1650m alt.),
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_des_Saisies were snow is still on the ground, and here parked at Beaufortain
[IMG]Next up is Col de Meraillet (1605m alt.) and Cormet de Roselend (1963m alt.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormet_de_Roselend
As you can see, we pretty much had the roads to ourselves
Arriving in Bourg-St-Maurice and en route to our hotel in Lanslebourg-Mont-Cenis, we did a final check of the status of Col de I'Iseran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Col_de_l%27Iseran ....but it was still closed so we took a massive detour on the motorway. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Booooo, closed.
Motorway is it
Arriving at the next hotel at 6pm, we discover we have the hotel to ourselves!
One real fire and an ice cold beer....
The whole place was lovely, and with our broken French and their broken English, no problems
View from our balacony
Total miles for the day, 234 miles, (9 hours on the road including all stops) about 50 miles more than planned due to the detour on the motorway.