Framedlight

We returned through the Col du Lautaret and then rejoined the Route des Grandes Alpes and the good old D902 and made our way south through Briançon, a town heavily fortified by Vauban in the 19th century as its sits close to the French/Italian border. We passed through Serre Chevalier where we took our first 'foreign' holiday with the kids and a tent over 20 years ago and continued to Cervieres and the foot of the Col d'Izoard. The road from here climbs steeply up to the top of the col (2,361m) and as you ascend you enter a most extraordinary world. The ground is bare and outcrops of gnarled pinnacles of weathered rock rise into the sky. The vegetation is sparse with twisted trees and small clumps of dry grass. It was this landscape I saw 20 years ago that encouraged me to revisit in 2014 and in hindsight we should have stayed overnight to get some dawn and sunrise photographs as the long shadows of those rocks would have been superb. However, after lunch on the descent o...

We drove down from the Col du Galibier through mist but as we got lower the clouds cleared and we could see that we were descending into the bowl of a broad valley flanked by mountains. This was the Col du Lautaret (2058m) where the road divides, going towards Briancon or La Grave. The Col du Galibier is the boundary between Savoie and the Hautes Alpes départements. We stopped on the way down from Galibier for a short walk and to observe some marmots running round the rocks. They were too far away to photograph but we did catch them at another location later in the trip. At the Col du Lautaret itself is a restaurant and 2 exceedingly large car parks, where we stopped and explored the hills a little although the no dogs on footpaths rule still applied. The backdrop to many of the pictures is the magnificent rocky face of La Meije (3,983m) with its crags and glaciers. This lies in the Écrins chain of mountains and dominates the area. It was the last major peak in the Alps to be climbed...

Alan has long wanted to cycle the Col du Galibier, a stunning piece of road, steep and reaching an altitude of 2,645m. It is a fabled road in the Tour de France and the winner of this stage is given a special award, the 'Souvenir Henri Desgrange', the man who inaugurated the Tour. There is a statue of him near the top which I managed to miss entirely. Setting out from Valloire, on the D902 still, we found a convenient place to park and Alan got kitted up and started to ride. I decided to drive to the top and meet him there which gave me opportunities to stop en route and take photographs. It is always a little hair raising driving the van on narrow roads with steep bends, although it was pretty quiet and the only main obstacle was an old French diesel van full of sheep which chugged and fumed it's way up, which I eventually overtook. The Galibier col lies between the Massif d'Arvan-Villards and the Massif des Cerces in the Dauphiné Alps. I stayed in our parking spot a...