French Alps 2026 Day 8: Flumet to Cluses

We set some sort of record getting out the door this morning, almost like we wanted out of the place. It was actually quite nice, but neither of us slept well. I’m running on three or four hours at best, which is not great when you’re biking this much.

You might think I’m over caffeinating or something. Not really. I have a cup of coffee in the morning or half a caffeine tab (50mg), and maybe one more tab during the day, but not always. Sometimes it’s just not your night. Weird dreams, and waking up in a new place every morning is disorienting. It gives me something like night terrors that can hang around for weeks after I get home.

Anyway, today we rode bikes again! Flumet to Cluses, over two historic passes: the Col des Aravis and the Col de la Colombière. The Colombière we did from the shorter, easier side from Le Grand-Bornand.

I was awake before the 7:00 alarm, and we were packed up and out the door by 8:00. We rolled back up the hill to the same bakery/cafe as yesterday. Harald ordered coffee. I ordered three pastries (a croissant, an apple thing and a pain au chocolat).

I ate one and a half and stashed the rest for later. Then onwards and upwards. We headed north out of Flumet and started climbing through a narrow canyon.

Chilly but pleasant. We climbed a bit up through the narrows, then dropped down again before the real climb started.

The climb popped us up out of the shade and shortly we were rolling through a nice little town called La Giettaz. It was mostly still asleep. 9:00 is not a happening time around here, at least this time of year. A few groups at the hotels were getting ready for some sort of outing, but that was about it. Traffic was light and we made good progress.

Looking back you could see the canyon we’d come through.

The top came fast. Only 500m to climb, and nice gradients the whole way.

We didn’t linger. Part of the reason for the fast start was that the weather had potential to degrade in the afternoon, and we didn’t want to be descending these roads in rain or storms if we could avoid it.

The descent was fast, with wide sweeping switchbacks that needed very little braking. We raced downhill, through a couple of construction zones, and met back up in La Clusaz.

We weren’t done descending yet, but eventually we got to the base of the next climb and bounced right into the ascent of the Col de la Colombière.

It started out with quite heavy traffic. We were riding through an area full of chalets and other ski focused infrastructure, with a fair amount of building going on. Presumably a lot of the work happening right now is the changeover from summer mode to winter mode. Anyway, the higher we got, the more the traffic dwindled. The weather held out too. In fact it was quite pleasant. None of yesterday’s heat, just a welcome breeze every time we changed direction on a switchback.

This statue was cool.

Finally we left the ski infrastructure behind and got more out in the open.

This one was also relatively short, 700m or so. We hit the summit at 11:55. Mark that time. It’s when we climbed our last mountain pass of the trip!

The descent was long and fast, which was good, because the weather was starting to close in. I got stuck at a construction stoplight for a few minutes and took this picture back up the pass.

At the bottom, after 30 minutes of descending, we regrouped and found some benches to sit on and plan next steps. We’re about 40km from Geneva now, and it’s flat valley riding from here. With the weather a potential issue, we decided to find a hotel, which we did in Cluses, a few km in the other direction. It’s conveniently close to food options, an important consideration after yesterday’s emptying of our metaphorical cupboards.

35 miles, 3h45m of riding and 4500ft of climbing. A good day. We finished strong, dry and well fed.

Tomorrow we coast down to Geneva and begin the next phase of our respective journeys!