The weather was not promising this morning. It had stopped raining during the night, but the roads were wet, and the alpine heights carried a dusting of new snow, probably the first of the season. It looks as if I have missed out on driving the Cols by just one day. However there were blue patches in the sky, and we were booked in the same hotel tonight, so the only thing to do was drive toward the Col du Lauteret.
Perched villages are Ventelon and Les Terrasses, above the village of La Grave. I’m not quite sure why these villages exist, given the year round difficulty of access. Perhaps the view? I’d just driven through this gorge on the D1091 from Bourg.A couple of corners higher the access road came into view.At the Col du Lauteret I saw at the intersection with the D902 that the boom gate was down and the Col du Galibier was ferme. Oh well, I’ll drive to Briancon. The scenery, with the fresh snow, was magnificent anyway.Briancon centre. I parked the car in an area placarded as no parking for 3 months during construction. Everyone else parked there, why not me? Then I found a nice coffee shop that made me a gaufre (waffle) with apricot jam, and a cafe au lait. On the way back to the car I located the patisserie that I knew must exist somewhere.On the way back from Briancon, the Col du Galibier was ouvert! But it was 1pm, far too late to begin the circuit of the cols. Since the Galibier was only 8km away, and the highest at 2600m, I’ll go there and come back. The road was quite good, not too narrow, but with no barriers at all.Near the col the road was blocked, but the tunnel under the col was open. I was happy not to go up there. The weather was darkening and there was the odd snow flurry.View to the valley below Col du Lauteret, about 1000m below.Back at Col du Lauteret. I drove down almost all the way from Galibier in second gear. No barriers.
From the village of La Grave. These are just photos of beautiful alps, but they are my photos of beautiful alps. Pulling into a parallel parking spot to take this, I drove as close as I dared to the rock wall, then from outside the car I looked at how far the car was away, about 450mm, less the retroviseur, tonnes of room. But you need to know exactly where your nearside wheels are, relative to the deep gutters at the right edge of many roads.
Back at Le Bourg D’Oisans, it was raining and Huez was out of sight in the mist. No point in going up there today. We repaired to the hotel bar. Monica and Gary later joined us. Eventually, separately, we set off in search of dinner, and ended up in the same restaurant that wasn’t open last night. It was great. They served galettes and crepes. My tomato salad had both fresh and dried tomatoes.
We had one extra day to spend, in Grenoble or somewhere else. Now I felt only ennui at the idea of staying in Grenoble. It wasn’t hard to decide on an extra night on the Cote d’Azur instead. I booked a room in Antibes for Wednesday.
We watched “An Officer and a Gentleman” on TV, dubbed into French.
