Route des Grandes Alpes

The Route des Grandes Alpes is a patch-work of roads, mostly secondary, tertiary, leading from Nice into the high country. We spent three days driving various sections of it, a couple of the high passes, spending a night at an aire in St. Andres des Alpes, another on a scenic lay-by near Savines les Lac, seeing bits of Barcelonette, Briancon, Grenoble, Chambery, another night at an RV dealer near Chambery, and then a couple more nights in a campground near Annecy. All this in the Pre-Alps, the Maritime Alps, the Dauphine Alps, the Bauges...lots of mountains around here. This and the next couple of posts provide some views.

The road passes through very deep and 
narrow limestone canyons of the river Var; 
note (click to enlarge) the netting devised 

to protect from stone-fall

A tree-lined, telephone pole-line, railway-lined road, with a 
car passing another, approaching us; the main point of 
which photo is the hill village on the right

Castle on the crag

One passes through innumerable villages along the way;

we were particularly taken with a little place called

Colmars, a walled-town that had been from the 16th

century a French border guard castle keeping an eye

on unfriendly Savoy; had lunch there

A portal; the town all spruced-up for tourists

Square and trough; the cute, colorful

pennants really add a touch class, no?

Church tower and exterior wall

One of the neater little Alpine shoppes I have seen; Vicki

stimulated the local economy here

Bike art