Click on any picture below to see a larger version from our French Alpes ride
Thursday, August 8, 2002 – Annecy to Bonneville
We began with a nice
warmup ride along the lake and then climbed a short distance to the town of
Thones – another great little
French town and no time to explore. We needed to get to
Bonneville by 1:30 PM to be transferred by van to Ferney-Voltaire. This is the last day
of the tour and everyone and it was necessary to get us back to the hotel to disassemble the
bikes, box them up, and pack for the trip home.
Just outside of Thones the climb to Col De Croix-Fry began. Since we had a rest
day Wednesday, we both felt pretty
good. The grade was mostly 7-8 percent with 2 kilometers of 9 percent.
It was an excellent
climb. The temperature was in the 60’s with blue skies and bright sun. It couldn’t be more
perfect for climbing.
We would have taken more pictures but the view was pretty much the same all the
way to the top. Of course the vista
was spectacular with mountains in every direction. There was an optional
climb that we should have done but we were worried about time. As it worked out, we
could have easily done the extra miles and everyone that did was
treated with incredible panoramas.
The descent into Bonneville was surprisingly quick and we arrived an hour
earlier than expected. The last 20 kilometers
of downhill was almost traffic-free and no braking necessary. We walked around
Bonneville (pronounced bone-vill) and snapped a few pictures. We realized as we
strolled about, that we really should have taken more photos that would have
depicted the ambience (feeling) of the towns. We’ve visited Europe
enough that we now tend not to take 300 pictures of old buildings and
flowers, but that’s part of the
charm.
All of the small towns
and villages that we passed through were decorated with flowers. There were flowers in
window boxes, gardens, roadsides – just everywhere. The traffic circles
and entrances to the center ville were small botanical gardens. The entrance to
Bonneville was not only flower-lined but the bridge leading into town was
decorated with flags. We had a small lunch
and socialized with some of the other people on our ride. We didn’t get to spend
a lot of time with them as Judith and I were always stopping to snap pictures
and checking out towns,
but everyone was very friendly and interesting.