15 February 2025 – Lac Du Bourget

Miles driven today = 150

Total Miles to date = 680

We burned our way through more than half a tank of diesel yesterday, so first job this morning was to top that up before getting ourselves back on the A6.  We expected another stress free drive on near deserted motorways but it seems that nearly all of France decided to get away for their mid-winter break today and the roads were absolutely jammed as a result.  Roadside sculptures of pixies leapfrogging assorted varieties of mushrooms kept us entertained for a while but I also had to concentrate a lot more on the brake lights of the vehicles in front than I have been used to these last couple of days.

On reaching Lyon we had a big decision to make.  For the last couple of weeks I have been keeping a very close eye on the weather forecast for Fourneaux, which is the last town on the French side before the Frejus tunnel dives beneath the Alps and into Italy.  We have our snow chains, as we are obliged to do, but I have no desire to use them other than in an emergency and we don’t have winter tyres, so if there was any sign of snow in the forecast we agreed that we would abandon the idea and head further South to skirt around the bottom of the Alps near the Mediterranean coast as we did last year.  Thankfully, as far as we can tell, there has been no major snowfall in the area for at least a week and with sunshine and temperatures approaching double figures both today and tomorrow we are able to stick to Plan A.  So we skirted around Lyon and headed East towards the mountains.

The traffic was still very heavy.  We queued for ages at the first peage point on the A43 and it ground to a halt again on several occasions.  With 35km to go to our destination Google Maps told us we were still nearly an hour away and that there was a 20+ minute hold up a short way ahead, so we decided to go off piste.  Obviously I had no chance to pre-assess the alternative route and it did take us through a couple of  villages where vehicles over 3.5 tonnes are banned (naughty!) but it also took us through some lovely scenery along the upper Rhone Valley. Then at Chevelu our diversion ultimately proved to be a false economy as we waited for ages to get through the Chat Tunnel and by the time we finally reached our destination we hadn’t spent much less time on the road than we did yesterday but having travelled more than 100 miles less.

However, once we were parked up we were able to relax a bit.  We are just a short walk from the shore of Lac du Bourget.

There are several little harbours and marinas close to where we are parked and even a small beach.

The weather this afternoon was surprisingly warm.  Even in February there were people out on the water practicing their sculling.

Chambery Airport is nearby and we can hear the roar of the engines as planes take off but it’s not really any more than background noise.

At 145 metres, Lac du Bourget is the deepest naturally formed lake entirely within the borders of France.  It’s 18km long and 3.5km at its widest point.  It’s surface area is 44.5 square km which also makes it the largest lake in France, although it is bumped back into second spot by Lac de Grand-Lieu depending on the Season.

After strolling along the lakeside we took a wander into the local town of Le Bourget-du-Lac, which turned out to be rather less than inspiring.  The attraction here is obviously the lake itself and the surrounding countryside.

There is an archeological dig going on although there is no indication as to what they might be digging up.

We did buy some very nice cakes though, which we took back to the van and ate to accompany a well deserved brew.

The aire we are in has large, flat bays.  It’s €14.50 a night to stay here including tourist tax, and electric hook up is less than €4 a night so we decided to make use of that to recharge some batteries.  The process for getting the supply to the socket is rather over-complicated with QR codes to be scanned and all sorts of other unnecessary shenanigans in order to get it working and I’ve also now realized why we couldn’t get any juice out of the terminal last night.  I assumed you had to switch the circuit breaker to green for “on” but of course it’s actually red for “live”.  Once I got that figured out we were up and running.

We could see some snow capped peaks in the distance while we were on our walk earlier.  With a fair wind that’s where we will be heading tomorrow and into Italy beyond.

16 February 2025 - Through the Alps to Italia