Bloggers Note: I apologize for the huge time gap in the progress of this story. My only excuse is that I lost focus. I blame my ascending aging process! I had set a goal of finishing this by the end of the 2024 winter… but turned out to be th early summer of 2026. But here we are! I hope you enjoy it. My memory of all of these events is pretty good, but after all, I am getting older and my memory is not what it used to be. Luckily for me, the only person who can contradict my account of these events is Steve Barson, but you will have to take that up with him! Now, on with the story of our adventure in France in 2023!
Steve was really finding his rhythm after riding the Col de Madeleine. But it was time for another rest day. A rest day for Steve, but not for me! I (easily) talked Steve into a recovery ride so I could get some miles in on my bike. I proposed an easy ride out toward Crolles and Grenoble, but for only an hour out and an hour back. This was to help me continue to regain some cycling form after my time away from cycling. It was going to be my second real ride so I wanted to begin to add more miles from the previous ride. Hopefully it will go well.
This ride was one of the routes I rode often 4 years ago when I was in Chambery last time. It is a route that primarily follows a dedicated bike path and only occasionally is shared with vehicles. I would have to try to navigate the route from memory, but I felt confident that it would all come back to me once I was on the ride. One of the really nice things about my AirBnB is that it is right at the beginning of the Voie Vert 63 bike route heading south from Chambery. I had been here many times before so the start was off to a good start. Actually, the entire ride went off without a hitch. I actually remembered all of the turns on the route and never got off route or lost, a major accomplishment for me since I can get turned around on a bike as well as anyone. Ask any of my riding friends! So I had a very successful ride and Steve got in a nice recovery ride. Good thing too since he would again be tested the next day.
Today we would head to St. Jean-de-Maurienne to ride the Col de La Croix de Fer. St. Jean-de-Maurienne is just up the road from La Chambre so getting there was easy enough. I had ridden the Col de la Croix de Fer before, but from the other side. My original plan was to ride from this side since it was new, but still give Steve an opportunity to also ride it. It was also a more difficult direction to ride it from, but I never told Steve that. I figured ignorance is bliss, right? A more difficult route proved to be only one of the challenges of this ride….
The ride started off simple enough, heading out of St. Jean-de-Maurienne to the west along a creek coming out of the mountains. We traveled past the Opinel Museum, but did not stop. Opinel is a company that makes quality knives right in the French Savoie and has their Headquarters now in Chambery. Only a few kilometers outside of town, we encountered our first bit of adversity of the day. The road was closed to vehicular traffic, but appeared to be open to bicycles. Steve continued on the dedicated route while I had to detour. Steve’s route would take him right up the valley and up to the Col. My route would take me to destinations unknown and I could only hope to see Steve at the top of the Col…. hopefully. Driving on the detour, I could see the road Steve was riding from across the valley. It was a good thing Steve was only looking at the road ahead, because from my perspective, I could see the road was built above a shear drop of several hundred meters. I could only hope that there was a good guardrail system along the route!
My route ended up going over the Col du Mollard just above the ski area of Albiez-Montrond. After I drove over the Col, I headed down a nice valley toward St. Jean d’Arves which was where I theoretically would reconnect to the original route that Steve was riding. Once in St. Jean d’Arves, I found a nice place to pull over on the road in hopes that Steve would be riding by soon. I began to have second thoughts about if I would have enough gas in the Peugeot for this drive so I decide to drive back to St. Jean-de-Maurienne once I figured out there wasn’t any gas in St. Jean d”Arves. I made it back to town pretty quickly and once again started up toward the Col du Mollard. About half the way back up, I ran into Steve! It turned out that the road that we both thought was open to cyclists was NOT. Steve had ridden many kilometers up the road until he met some road workers who informed him (with lots of pointing and arm motions) that the road was blocked by a large slide and not traversable by any mode. So Steve had to back track and then ride up the Col du Mollard as well. I fell into my mode of following Steve on his bike up the Col where we stopped and took photos and had some food. Then down to St. Jean d’Arves and then the final climb up through St. Sorlin d’Arves (which was pretty steep!) From there, it was about 10k to the summit. There were again a lot of cyclists on the route since it is pretty famous so Steve had a lot of people to draw inspiration from. He made it to the summit just fine, even with the additional climb of the Col du Mollard. Good job again Steve!
Now, I talked Steve into some additional riding and another Col to add to his Palmares. (Palmares is a french word for your list of awards and accomplishments) After a rest and photo ops, Steve would continue from the top of the Col de la Croix de Fer and go down valley for a few kilometers, then ride up to the Col du Glandon. Luckily for Steve that the Col du Gland was only a short ride uphill and not very much elevation gain at all. Mostly, just another photo opportunity! Then a long steep downhill back to St. Jean-de-Maurienne and packing up the car with bikes and gear. The additional challenges of the day included many extra kilometers of riding for Steve…. and two additional unplanned summits. The Col du Mollard and the Col du Glandon.
The next day it was raining! Not a bad thing since it was a planned rest day for Steve and the day we were going to explore Lyon, the third largest city in France. Actually, it stopped raining early on and it turned out to be a nice day. We visited a few beautiful cathedrals and had lunch at the 1-2-3 Cafe which severed a really great bowl of “French Onion” soup I might add!
With another rest under Steve’s belt, we headed once again into the mountains. This time, it would be the mighty Galibier, the highest point of most Tour de France races and also the highest point of Steve’s riding itinerary. We drove to St. Michel-de-Maurienne, another village further up-valley from La Chambre and St. Jean-de-Maurienne. This ride was potentially tricky. We had been monitoring the weather at the Galibier summit. There had been rain and the forecast still had a chance of more rain. At least any snow had held off. We were able to verify this since there was a webcam at the summit we found on the internet.
The weather was actually pretty good to start the ride. There was a brief flat warm up through the village before the road began to pitch up. As Steve began his ascent of the Galibier, I headed back down valley to get more gas for the car. I caught up with him in due time. The road would go through another village, Valloire which was just past the Col de Telegraph, a Col which Steve would ride over on the way to the summit of the Galibier, a nice little bonus for this who enjoy riding uphill!
While the weather started off pretty good, it deteriorated little by little over the course of the ride. Steve rode the Galibier well and reached the summit in a good strong effort, but the temperature was getting cool and dropping as time went by. For this reason, Steve and I took our summit photos and did not stay on the summit very long. We headed down, backtracking the route Steve rode up, down to St. Michel-de-Maurienne and the end of the ride. The Galibier would represent the end of the Alp’s portion of the trip for Steve. It was a great way to end his tour of the Alps.
