The Hautes-Alpes June 2008

Tour Summary

Coat of arms of the Hautes-Alpes department

With successful motorcycle tours to Chamonix Mont-Blanc and the Pyrenees behind us, for our third installment we decided to base ourselves in Briancon - south-eastern France - and tour the Hautes-Alpes. Our only dilemma was how to get there. In 2006 when we rode down to Chamonix we discovered that it’s a long way, and if you have time restraints it takes up a lot of valuable touring time. After all we were going to the Alps to ride mountain roads and passes, not autoroutes. After some discussion and a bit of investigation we had our answer. We would catch the Motorail from Calais to Nice, and then ride back through France for the next 6 days.

Other lessons that we'd learnt, this time from our 2007 tour to the Pyrenees, was that we didn't want to move hotels every day and we should book accommodation in reasonably sized towns. Last year we spent virtually every night in a different hotel and were constantly unpacking and packing. We also stayed in remote villages with no nightlife and nothing for us to do outside the hotel.

After arriving in Nice we would spend the day riding the Alpine roads and passes - including the mighty Cime de la Bonette, which at 2,802m lays claim to the title of highest paved road in Europe - that would take us to Briancon and where Hotel de la Chaussee would serve as our base for the next three nights. We would then spend a day riding up to Belfort where the Grand Hotel du Tonneau d'Or would become our base for a couple more nights. We'd booked into Le Clos du Montvinage in Etreaupont for our final night, a hotel we stayed at in 2006 on our way back from Chamonix. Sorted.

We were one rider down from last year - Mark couldn't make it due to work commitments. For our third tour the riders were Chris B on his BMW R1100S Boxer Cup, Pete on his Kawasaki GTR1400, Kyle on his Suzuki SV1000S, Phil on his BMW K1200S, Cat on his Aprilia Tuono, Chris P on his Honda Fireblade and Gaz on his Honda Blackbird.