Cycling in France This Summer

This summer we loaded up the campervan, not with sea kayaks for a change, but with road bikes.

We were away from home for five weeks, and spent most of that time in France.

There are four 'classic' climbs of Tour de France fame, Puy de Dome, Col du Tourmalet, Col du Galibier and Mont Ventoux.

I had no idea if we had the legs for any of them, but I wanted to attempt Puy de Dome and La Ventoux, so our driving route was designed around them.

And a wedding in Italy, but that's a different story.

Things didn't work out quite as planned, but we had some utterly superb rides.

We completely fell in love with the area between Annecy and Albertville.

The tourist office has a fantastic, free map-pack which grades all the climbs to the Cols in the area, over 100 of them.

These photos are after climbing the fairly easy introductory climb of Col de Leschaux, we kept on going up the back side of Le Semnoz, over 1600m.

Liz discovered she's pretty tough on a bike too. More rides in coming days.