Isere river + Alps: France variety week

Sharon and I had lots of fun doing rides around different sections of the
Isere river -- see photos:
http://www.roberts-1.com/t/b07/f/k
. (and that page has a link to a Map of the route locations)

That region in the Rhone-Alpes is famous for the big climbs over high
mountain passes. We discovered that it's also got lots of very pretty and
interesting moderate and gentle riding nearby. Later we noticed that most of
our riding was near the Isere river, which shares its name with the highest
paved-road pass in Europe: Col de l'Iseran.

Here's the riding we did, from gentler to steeper:
* Lac d'Annecy west side bike path
* Aime - Bourg St Maurice bike path
* around Lac d'Annecy -- half road, half path
* valley farms + vineyards around Montmélian
* Versant du Soleil "balcony": Aime - Granier - Bourg St Maurice
* Col de l'Iseran from Val d'Isere

And there's other good riding we've done there on previous trips and more
exploring we did driving in our car -- so we're eager to go back for lots
more . . . also Hiking -- lots of famous spectacular trails around. We
enhanced our variety with three days of mountain walking.

Our overall strategy: Just like home in USA we got ourselves and our tandem
bike to the start of each day's riding by driving our (rental) car. We got
here by flying into Geneva (Switzerland), but this region is also close to
Lyon (France) and Turin / Torino (Italy) airports.

Details -- read more he
http://roberts-1.com/b/v/e/07a/#Fran...ley_more_07sep

Ken