Dijon through the Alps

Even on long travels, the end of any travel segment can start to drain your enthusiasm as you start thinking about the next phase of your journey, or worse, the work waiting for you back home.

We’ve all had that end of vacation feeling or remember our childhood summers of freedom coming to a close in late August (Ugh!). But one of the reasons we gave up or locked up most of our material possessions three years ago was to experience the world without that constant end of trip deadline. No limits or boundaries. It’s a magical feeling and one I appreciate more and more as we traverse the world. We are lucky and know it. We recommend everyone tries it someday.

But our last few weeks of spring bike touring in France took a concerted effort to stay focused and motivated. Don’t get me wrong, parts of it were wonderful, and some warm spring (summer?) weather gave us a “vacation from our vacation” feeling in Annecy, a perfect cap to our recent journey.

After a brisk morning cycle to our train hop from Les Laumes – Alésia on the Burgundy Canal, we rolled into Dijon Ville station mid-day. We were pleased to see a train platform ramp and the option of an at-grade exit to the street. Outside the station was a bikeway towards center ville. This abundance of bike infrastructure is one of the major reasons why we’ve been exploring France by bike for nearly 3 months!

This was our second visit to Dijon while cycle touring, but this time we planned to spend two nights to allow a bit more time to explore the beautiful city at the heart of Burgundy. It’s an extremely pleasant and lively city, with a bike and pedestrian oriented core, parks, and beautiful architecture. Free museums and a wide array of food options add to the draw. It’s also extremely well connected by train on the Paris-Lyon mainline.

After enjoying a day off the bikes in Dijon, we had planned to continue south and east towards the Jura mountains and Geneva. But as I looked into the details of our planned route, I was thinking maybe we needed a Plan B.

First, there was a lot of flat sections of the Burgundy canal and Doubs River to pass along with a likely headwind. Blah. Second, lodging with food in the Jura is very limited and I was challenged to find places to stay early season once we climbed up to the 3,000+ foot plateau. (Probably better to camp up there.) Third, more unseasonably cold weather and rain was predicted. No thank you.

So we pivoted last minute and instead caught a train south to Valence via Lyon, and headed up the Isère River valley into the heart of the Alps. It was the route I had originally scoped for our return to the Vallée Verte. It has a lot more lodging options, lower elevations, and trains for backup. More importantly, we were excited by this new route, which is a key component of (nomadic) life. It’s good to suffer sometimes for the sake of a goal, but also ok to make sensible choices for yourself.

The Isère River enters the Rhône north of Valence and is the namesake of the Department that is a part of the region of Rhône-Alps. We had actually passed through Valence in March on the Via Rhôna, so had to retrace a bit of our route upstream this time. Strangely, the lower part of the Isère River is actually still in the department of the Drôme.

We just beat the forecast rain to our first night stay in Romans-sur-Isère, but were a bit stunned by the somewhat incessant and gridlocked traffic through this old riverside industrial city. We slogged through to get to our surprisingly charming lodging on the edge of the city, and walked back into the center of the town in the rain for dinner. We did find a (the?) fun and friendly place to get a drink and dinner and everyone was very nice to the two noticeable American cycle tourists. The town clearly gets few cycle tourists, although sits on the recently developed V63/V62 cycle route know collectively as “La Belle Via”.

We love to learn about the history of places, even for a one night stay, and Romans has been influenced by its strategic location on trading routes and a major river. Shoe manufacturing is still a business and there is a small museum dedicated to the industry that was unfortunately closed by the time we rolled into town. Further down river are abundant walnut orchards. On the way out of town, we learned another source of major traffic was a nuclear fuel manufacturing facility. But Romans is not a bicycle city and the bike infrastructure was sad or non-existant. There was a renovation of part of the Main Street in progress which may help the pedestrian environnement, but otherwise it seemed to be a bit overrun by cars and parking.

The challenge of the next day was 84km to Grenoble which would have been manageable except it was raining out the door and rarely stopped. We had a low point this day as the traffic getting out of Romans, steep hills, and incessant rain seemed to zap the energy and motivation of Cheryl, and I could sense it. We both have our bad days, but generally one of us keeps it mentally together. Today we were both just a bit over it. Travel, rain, eating out…all of it.

We did manage to miss the worst of an epic thunderstorm and hail in a farmers shed. Cheryl is a travel trooper and rarely complians, but the ups and downs of 10 weeks of cycle touring was weighing us both down. (I generally complain first -;) We had a train bailout option in the small town of Vinay, but arrived to just miss a train prior to a 2 hour gap in service. The days lack of progress sent me into a travel tailspin too, and let’s just say, that afternoon was one of the low points of our France sojourn.

But the sun came out as we waited for our train. and the short train hop to Grenoble was fine. The city was lively and green, and the next day was beautiful. Travel and cycle touring can propel you on a rollercoaster of emotions, but that is why we continue on. The next day IS generally better -:) .

We loved Grenoble but only stayed a night as hotels were unusually expensive due to a conference. We vowed to come back and explore more there soon as it’s nearby the Vallée Verte and has a lot of top museums, not to mention outdoor adventure in every direction. The next two days cycling further up the valley were inspiring and relatively short, so allowed for plenty of time to stop at sights, take photos, and bask in our positive attitude!

We found a nice little apartment in Albertville to spend the first two nights of the long Corpus Christi holiday weekend, as Albertville is actually not much of a tourist town, despite hosting the 1992 Winter Olympics. It’s pleasant enough and was a good place to relax, do laundry, and explore a bit, but otherwise would recommend other places in the Alps for scenery and charm. It has the old Olympic park and a small medieval town, Conflans, on an adjacent bluff. We realized all the charming Olympic shots you saw in 1992 were probably of Conflans, not Albertville per se.

After Albertville, we had an easy day to Annecy planned, but I did my best to make it a bit more challenging as we couldn’t get into our apartment there until 5:30. But the weather was spectacular and the route a joy, minus a few rough patches off road. We got to the south end of Lake Annecy just after lunch, where our route joined the 40km lake loop. It seemed that most of France was outside that day as the weather was finally warm. We merged into the pathway mix of fast and slow, families and dogs, and racers kitted out still thinking they might achieve their personal Strava best weaving around thousands of people. It was fun and the scene was memorable as we got closer to the center of Annecy.

Annecy is a lovely French city with a great density, beautiful lake front, summer swimming, boating, and strolling. It benefits from easy access by train including daily direct TGVs to Paris. For our California friends…imagine a 2 hour train from San Francisco to North Lake Tahoe. We can only dream.

Our final route from Annecy to the Vallée Verte included a morning train hop as the V62 route is sadly incomplete and we’d been warned about the road near Cruseilles. The terrain is steep and rugged north of Annecy and it would be too long to do in one day as well. So we enjoyed a scenic hop on Line 2 of the recently upgraded and completed Léman Express system centered around Geneva. The trains are modern, frequent, and bike friendly. Bike space is somewhat limited, so we imagine at peak times it could be challenging, but we had a very peaceful ride on the 10am train which starts Annecy. Note that you need to buy a Swiss bike day pass if you stay on the system into Switzerland. (we did not.) The fixed price Swiss bike day pass (regardless of distance) is not a cycle friendly solution for short hops and really should be revised by SBB.

We shaved over an hour off our last time climbing up the high valley route and felt a strong sense of accomplishment as we rolled into our friend’s house again. We appreciate everyday of our freedom. Happy travels!