Living in the middle of the paradise of curves myself, right in the Dolomites, I have always underestimated the French Alps. However, the Route des Grandes Alpes was recommended by the community frequently. So last year Delightful Driving went out on a Discovery Tour to explore the famous French passes. If you haven’t yet, you can read the blog post about it here.
It was on this occasion that I realized that until then I had ignored some of the most beautiful roads of Europe. Precisely for this reason we wasted no time and offered the Tour des Grandes Alpes which is a modified version of the famous Route des Grandes Alpes. We have joined forces once again with Bends & Curves to show you our favorite spots.
The Tour des Grandes Alpes has launched successfully. Our tour was in high demand and in fact it was fully booked. I think this happened for a good reason. In fact this is definitely a roadtrip to have on the bucket list.
The start:
My personal tour started two days before the actual start. Of course I tried to add as many mountain passes as possible into the trip from Bolzano to Thonon les Bains. On the evening of our departure from Bolzano we went to Tiefencastel for the night and I experienced the Albula Pass for the first time. It is definitely worth seing and driving.
On the next morning we met with our friend Alex from Berlin at Chur to continue our trip to the Lac Leman together. Unfortunately we drove the Furkastrasse on a Saturday morning. Meaning the street was brimming with cars, motorcycles and bicycles either of which didn’t want to share the pass with anyone else. So we experienced a lot of dodgy driving and especially dangerous overtaking.
As opposed to last year, when we started at Evian-les-Bains, this year our tour started from the original place: Thonon-les-Bains. When we finally arrived we found the hotel parking space already full with wonderful colorful cars lined up. For this tour we had bright spectrum of cars: McLaren, Alfa, Alpine, Porsche and of course Lotus.
Even though we were not in Alsace, we started the first evening with a typical Alsatian dish that I was looking forward to eat again after a long time: La Tarte Flambee, a.k.a. Flammekueche.
One week of curves:
The Tour des Grandes Alpes divided the route into seven days of driving. All of them featuring plenty of curves and the famous French cols.
On day one we started driving the D902 which is a beautiful smooth curvy road with a lot of trees and beautiful views and landscapes along the road. After having driven the first passes, we regrouped at the Lac de Roselend to take a picture of the cars all together. The scenery is just unbelievable and beautiful and we managed to squeeze all the cars together onto the platform above the barrier. In the evening we arrived in Tignes, at more than 2000m elevation above sea level. We had a fantastic dinner at the Niurou Steak House again, where we casually walked-in the year before.
Tignes is a beautiful place to wake up at, with this clear and fresh mountain air. But there wasn’t much time to enjoy the Lake because off we had quite a menu of cols ahead: Col de l’Iseran, Col du Télégraphe, Col du Galibier (2.677 m) and finally the Col d’Izoard. A fantastic day of driving, unfortunately on the way there the shift cable of my “rental Elise” broke.
My rental car:
For the ones that are wondering why I travelled in a borrowed Elise: The fan of my Elise failed in June and I removed the clam to replace it. With the front clam off I noticed that the towing strut was really rusted on the inside. Since I listen to the advice you all kindly provided, I decided to buy the stainless steel strut – only that hasn’t yet arrived. Therefore my Elise is still without front clam.
For this reason Joerg borrowed me his blue Elise, called Notte (night) after its midnight blue color. At the beginning I wasn’t so happy with her. She felt really difficult to drive in the hairpins for me, since she has wider tires and a different geometry. On top she has the quick release MOMO steering wheel which is a bit smaller than the standard one. All these ingredients made it the perfect car to drive fast but rather on the straights.
After finally I got my arms used to the resistance and while I was firing up the passes with Notte, the end of the shifter cable broke – the “eye”
Fortunately we had 2 McGyver’s with us who carried strong wire, duct tape and cable ties with them. They managed to fix the broken cable provisionally and the solution survived all the way back to Bolzano. Luckily and thanks to their skills we managed to carry on with both cars. However not to my greatest joy:
Me and Joerg did a car swap. He drove the Elise shifting carefully mostly from 1st to 3rd and to 5th trying not to break the temporary connection of the cable. I continued with the GT3, and if Notte felt weirdly heavy, can you imagine how I felt driving the 996 monster. I called it the truck because everything feels so much bigger. The steering wheel is probably 2 times the one of the Elise, and pressing the clutch felt like doing leg press in fitness studio.
Poor Mezger, I don’t want to talk bad about him, since he has been a good driving companion all the Tour and delighted me with the sound of its engine which I can’t get enough of.
Eventful driving:
Unfortunately we experienced some more so-called “eventful driving” plot-twists on that day because of some more car troubles. Everyone worked hard to help as much as possible and so little by little the different situations were resolved and we were able to proceed with the Tour des Grandes Alpes.
On day 3 we drove the unbelieveable Red Rock Road, which is absolutely worth seeing. The day ended almost in the middle of nowhere in Puget Theniers. In return of being in a rather unpopulated area, we enjoyed a magnificent view of the stars at night.
The morning after we went to drive the famous Col de Turini. This driving day was shorter than the ones before to allow for some free time to enjoy at the beach of Menton. Needless to say some of our group preferred to do more driving and went to Monaco for Loews Hairpin pictures and eyeballing even more exotic cars. What else?
After we recharged the energy in the South of France it was time to invert the direction and start going north again. The aircon-less Elise S1 drivers were looking especially forward to it, because this part is always a bit challenging when driving in the blazing hot climate of the Mediterranean coast. The day provided some extra challenges because the the street from Sospel to the Turini turned out to be closed for roadworks. Imagine a great crowd of colorful cars driving into all kinds of directions to reach the summit of the Turini. We finally managed, using the Col de Braus and others.
What I love about the Fench Alps:
I was more looking forward to the drive on my absolute favorite pass in France: The Col de la Bonette, which is also the highest in Europe. The images of the previous year drive were still vividly etched in my mind. I have never seen such spectacular scenery. It starts in the middle of green nature and you arrive at the top that seems to be on the moon. Vegetation and the colors change as you go up and the nice thing about this pass is that it feels endless (50 km of pass). Plus the road is very smooth with a mixture of straights and wide curves so as to allow you to drive at a brisk pace where you can see far away and you can only smile and look around.
The 6th day hasn’t disappointed either, we had a wonderful lunch stop at the very top of l’Alpe d’Huez. In the afternoon we drove via the Col de la Madeleine, which really impressed me a lot. It probably became my second favorite pass.
On the way down we were greeted by a flock of sheep that blocked the passage for a while.
Another great day of driving full of curves and stunning landscapes followed but unfortunately all good things come to an end eventually and therefore we arrived at the very last day of the Tour and we arrived back from where we started.
The good thing about the Tour des Grandes Alpes is that the streets are not so touristic and this means not so many traffic jams. Of course the selection of Hotels is therefore smaller compared to the Dolomites.
The Routes are a mix of narrow streets with hairpins and wide and fast roads. The great thing is that the landscapes keep changing and therefore you never get tired of looking at what surrounds you.
I have been missing these wonderful places for too many years, now it’s time to recover, so if you, like me, have underestimated the French Alps, join the next tour!
