While seemingly a lot of miles today, we need to go for a good few hours just to get back to nice riding territory in France and knock off nearly half the mileage in the process. We can take an alternate motorway route if required to cut out some time. Towards the latter half of the day, we’ll be rewarded with a ride up Col du Chaussy via Lacets de Montvernier after first passing from Italy to France via Monsesio (It)/ Mont Cenis (Fr); followed by Col du Télégraphe and the Col du Galibier, one of the more famous Tour de France roads. We stay the night in La Salle-les-Alpes, a ski town.
Daily Highlights
- Col du Chaussy-Lacets de Montvernier Col du Chaussy is a high mountain pass, at an elevation of 1533m(5,029ft) above the sea level, traversed by the D77B road, located in the Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. The road to reach the summit starts with the famous “lacets de Montvernier”, an astonishing piece of mountain road engineering. It climbs sharply via 17 hairpins tightly stacked one on top of another in just 3km. Dating from 1934, Col du Chaussy is probably best known for the “lacets de Montvernier”, but beyond this it’s a big climb with more than 1000 metres of ascent.
- Col du TélégrapheCol du Télégraphe is a mountain pass in the French Alps situated above the Maurienne valley between the eastern end of the massif d’Arvan-Villards and the massif des Cerces Col du Galibier
- Col du Galibier is a mountain pass in the southern region of the French Dauphiné Alps near Grenoble. It is the ninth highest paved road in the Alps and the sixth highest mountain pass. It is often the highest point of the Tour de France.
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Early start today as the kilomitage and curvitage is huge. The ride down the peninsula of Lake Como was gentle & peaceful and lulled us into a false sense of accomplishment. As the temperature rose into the high 30s we hit the crazy Italian freeways as we attempted to hot foot it into France. There was none of the politeness of Austria or the free flowing freeways of Switzerland.this was carnage, idiots to the left of us, fools to the right of us, here we go, stuck in the middle filtering on big bikes through the Milan peak hour!
As fatigue set in, the turn off at Turin came into sight. Unfortunately, it was the turn before the turn off, so Hydro, with a deft piece of navigating and a leap of faith and anticipating we could throw a u turn on the freeway, eschewed the ticket gate. We executed a turn and double pike across 6 lanes of traffic. 20km of freeway later we managed to find a place to do a u turn and ran straight into the bureaucracy. No ticket no pass! After half an hour and an 80 Euro fine, we moved forward. Boxy is fuming and threatens litigation over his fine, if only he could understand what it said!
We limped into a freeway servo for lunch and a drink. The temp is now 40 degrees. Hydro set out the options available to us this afternoon – a lengthy & exhausting 5-hour ride with him through numerous mountain passes or a quick 1.5 hour straight ride to the Hotel. Boxy, Tony & Singo need to hear no more. The three amigos decide that they have seen enough scenery for the day and program a direct route to the hotel. The turns they are thinking of are :
- flip turns in a swimming pool;
- no turns on a massage table, and
- alternate turns at the bar to buy a G&T.
Boxy kills another hour getting the receptionist to translate his fine into English. She struggles so he turns to Google Translate, working feverishly on concocting a case for the defense.
He is now definitely going to court!
Meanwhile Russ and Hydro, head to the Cols and Valleys of France via the Frejus tunnel. The exit is closed, so we take col du Chaussy from the northern end. Spectacular. We regroup at the top for contemplation and then move on to the even more spectacular Col de Telegraphe and Col du Galibier. It was quite a sight pulling into the hotel to find Singo and Boxy wandering around in their bathrobes looking for the massage room. Dinner at the Hotel, with Hydro introducing the group to many bottles of Chateau Neuf du Pape.
Silver Foxes Motorcycle Club Australia 