The mountains July 7

Annecy – July 7.

A rare sunny day and we are off to the mountains, and over some famous mountain passes courtesy of the Tour de France.

First stop is the Col de Telegraph, followed by the Col de Aravis. We passed quite a few cyclists – you would need good climbing legs around here and lot more gears and a slightly lighter frame than the Trek 1200.!

The French Alps are every bit a specky as you see on the TV and more, with ski lifts and fabulous little chalets everywhere. Our next stop was the Col de le Columbiere. The road up here is seriously steep, but still very popular with cyclists – these guys ( and girls) are seriously fit, and we passed some great looking legs!

At the top of the Col de le Columbiere is a little restaurant that we often see in the Tour de France coverage – this is where we had lunch after a short, but very steep walk up into the mountains.

As we drove down the steep descent we marvelled hat this was side the cyclists would be coming up this year. It is very steep!

Back in Alex the girls changed into bathers and we went off to “le lac” the Annecy Lake for a swim. Neither Brian nor I ventured in, but apparently the water was very cold.

I had my first experience of a “squat” toilet – more information later if anyone is interested.