The purpose of the trip was to join my son who studies in Lyon, go with him to the Lyon–Nice football match (allez Nice!), then take him back to Nice. So I left Nice by car two days before the match, aiming to climb some BIGs on the way. After a night at a hotel near Montelimar, I parked in the morning at the Livron station and crossed the Rhône to find the col de la Mûre road.
Nothing much to say about this trip, all things went fine except that the road between Désaignes and Saint-Pierre-sur-Doux was signalled closed 8 km further. This was too far away to try my luck, so I headed directly to Saint-Agrève and was back on my itinerary at Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid, with some extra kilometres that didn’t bother me much.
After crossing the col de Charousse and col de la République, I arrived at Crêt de l’Oeillon. It’s a dual BIG as once the antenna that marks the official BIG is reached, one can see opposite of it the military tower that looks slightly higher. So it’s difficult to go down without climbing to this building. After that, it was all downhill and flat to the Péage-de-Roussillon station where soon a train took me back to the car. I then drove up to Chambery with Mont Revard and Mont du Chat as my new targets.
It was raining when I left the hotel in the morning. But when I parked by the lake between Mont Revard and Mont du Chat, the rain had stopped. I had some light rain when climbing the Revard but the weather improved and I even had some sun at the Mont du Chat. In Mont Revard, I went to the belvedere where they installed platforms to enjoy the view over the lac du Bourget. One was built from glass, to see through the floor. I really tried to walk on this but couldn’t. Of course it’s stupid because I would have walked without hesitation on a wooden platform, even higher than this one.
After going down Mont Revard, I crossed the south side of the lake on a nice cyclist path, and began the climb of Mont du Chat. It’s a long and very steep ascent, where I struggled much longer than expected. It was even one of the hardest climbs I ever did, but I finally reached the top. After a few (fuzzy) photographs, I went down to the car and drove to Lyon with plenty of time before going to the match (by the way, it ended in a 1-1 draw).
Pictures : http://cathie.charbonnier.free.fr/piwigo/index.php?/category/10
