French Alps 2026 Day 7: Albertville to Flumet

So, a two climb day after a relatively light day yesterday (one big climb counts as light at this point). Breakfast at the hotel was tasty, served in a huge room with a lot of breakfast action going on, and included in the price.

Then we packed up and I my stuff out on our deck. Here’s the proof. Everything I’ve been wearing, using or eating on this trip has mostly been fitting into these bags.

I will say there’s one frame bag that stays on the bike full time. It holds the stuff I hope to never need: pump, tools, spare tubes, that sort of thing. Anyway, enough logistics.

We were headed up onto the “cyclotourisme route,” which leaves right from Albertville, pops up over a big old mountain pass and drops down into a valley that’s otherwise easy to reach from Albertville. There’s nothing on the road except one historical fort at the top…

…and a few small farms lower down. No ski hills, no mountain bike park. Just a road made for us, with 1000m of steep climbing on it!

And yeah, it was everything it was cracked up to be. Small road, no traffic, lots of switchbacks and enough changes in the terrain to keep it interesting. Cool views of Albertville too.

After a quick start this morning we were on top shortly after 11:00 and feeling good.

The descent down the other side devolved into a bit of gravel and broken road for a while, but then the pace picked up. We came around a corner, out of the forest, and there was Mont Blanc. Like, I actually gasped.

We did some switchbacks, always struggling to pay attention to both the road and the view. It’s a real problem! Somebody needs to invent an autopilot for bikes so we can look at the mountains safely. Here’s one more.

At the bottom we had to ride about 4km on a slightly busier road to get over to the next climb, which started in Villard-sur-Doron. By the time we got there it was feeling like lunch and we needed water. Harald has a map on his phone with water and bathroom locations on it, and it turned up a small park right off our route with a spigot and a nice picnic table. We ate a lot of food!

Harald’s lunch was, amongst many other things, a vegan soy patty with Italian seasonings from yesterday’s Lidl, with mustard from the tube he’s been carrying since Germany.

The climb was the Col des Saisies, another HC climb when the pros use it, like the Madeleine yesterday. We hit it at the hottest part of the day and really felt it. Sweating like crazy, riding with some urgency between the patches of shade.

Harald and I separated a bit on this one. I tend to move a little quicker in the heat, and my gearing forces me to go harder anyway once the gradient gets to 9% or more. So once or twice I cooled off in a shady spot and we’d rejoin. It’s the same technique we use to pair my “relaxed” descending with Harald’s more “zoomy”, with the roles swapped.

Total climb is 1200m or so, and we worked diligently at it despite the heat. Then a false summit, and a drop down into a ski resort town named Hauteluce. Back up to regain the altitude we’d just lost, but first we needed to reload on water.

This proved to be a good moment to figure out where we were sleeping, so we sat down and did our Google due diligence and found an Airbnb style rental in a town down the mountain named Flumet.

In these ski resort towns a lot of services are closed right now because we’re between seasons. We were hopeful a grocery store would be open in Flumet, but we weren’t getting a lot of warm fuzzies. Thankfully we were still carrying enough food to manage dinner if it came to that, but we hoped for options.

Anyway, up we popped, finally, to the top of the pass.

The descent down to Flumet was fast and pleasant except for a few minor hiccups: an automated stop light that I got stuck behind for a couple of minutes, and a 10 minute “dumb climb,” as Liz would call it, that interrupts the general downward trend to the valley floor.

Then we had to bike a bit more downhill to find our rental, which of course was not in the center of town.

We battled the key codes and the locks and eventually got ourselves situated. We have a system: I always get the bed closer to the bathroom, because I’m 50. Sometimes that means I get my own bed, like this:

Before we showered we headed back uphill into town to find the grocery store. Sadly it wasn’t meant to be. Closed for the season on September 2. 😢 🪊

But hey, there was a bakery/cafe open and we took advantage to do some people watching and general smelly-biker-chillin on a busy corner in Flumet.

We picked up some breads for later then eventually we blitzed down the hill to our rental to take care of the remaining business of the day. You know the drill. Showers. Laundry. Food. And for me, write this.