As the weather forecast looked very promising for the last weekend of October — with lots of sun and the daytime temperatures in upper teens or lower twenties — we decided to take Monday off and head for a short bike tour on this All Saints’ holiday. We had just recently realized that Montmélian, a town about 30 kilometers North-East from us in the Grésivaudan valley, isn’t just a railroad crossing between Chambéry, Albertville, and Grenoble, but also has an attractive old town. So, we made plans to ride there, find a couple of easy hiking routes, and ride back home. So far, so good, until we tried to book an accommodation for three nights. There were two hotels in Montmélian itself, but we preferred a place where we could cook our own meals. We found a guesthouse outside of the town in Sainte-Hélène-du-Lac with 2-3 kilometers to a supermarket, and booked it. The next day we received a message from the guesthouse that the first night was not available, and they asked us to cancel or modify our booking. The site we used for booking did not allow either for free. After a lot of back-and-forth with the guesthouse, they finally offered to make the modification for us. However, at this point both hotels were fully booked, but we found another guesthouse — much nicer actually, and a little closer to the town — and booked it for the first night.
Our bike ride on Saturday was quite uneventful until Tei’s front wheel hit a pothole and the loaded bike took her down. The result was a severe road rash in the left knee and heavily bruised hip and thighs. Fortunately, no bones were broken.
The first thing to do, when we reached the first night’s guesthouse, was to walk to the town, and get some groceries. Google Maps has played tricks on us recently, and also this time suggested a route that was impassable on foot. So, we ended up walking more than two kilometers on steep and slippery forest trails. It was almost dark when we got back, but we had found food (=frozen moussaka from Lidl)!
The next day we planned to go hiking first, and then move to the second guesthouse, which was a tactical mistake: if there were any stores open on Sunday, they would certainly be closed in the afternoon. So, we were hopeful we’d find a pizza place that delivered or offered take-out.
The hike (16K in 4h, D+/D- 360m) took us first to the lake of Sainte-Hélène-du-Lac and then around it. It was a scenic hike with a lot of sunshine. The temperature also climbed to almost 20 degrees of Celsius. After moving to our second guesthouse, we started browsing the dinner (and breakfast!) options: it wasn’t only that only few places were available, but most of them opened late, like 6:30pm., when it was already dark in the countryside with no streetlights — a night before we had switched back to normal time, and our only transport option was a bicycle. Finally we found a place that opened 5:30pm., and offered take-out, both pizzas and wine. Tomi braved the darkness and got us two pizzas for the night and a calzone for breakfast.
The second hike (14.4K in 4h, D+/D- 550m) took us to the other direction to the Savoie vineyards above Montmélian. It was also a very scenic hike with a lot of sunshine. The stainless steel statue is called “Christ-Roi”, by Livio Benedetti (1946-2013). He was originally from Verona, but his family moved to France when he was three years old. The statue was erected in 2017, much to the dismay of some residents of the nearby village of Arbin.
Then on All Saints’ Day it was time to ride back home. We had all our rain gear with us, since the original weather forecast promised rain for this day. We checked the forecast again the night before and were happy to find out that the rain was supposed to start at night and be over by the morning. And that’s what happened! We had checked another route on Google Maps for our return trip —a bike path that was supposed to follow the river Isère the whole way. And maybe it did, but was impassable by bike since, first, after the pavement ended the path continued as a very narrow nature trail barely wide enough for walking, and secondly, there was a pretty big stream to cross and no bridge. Maybe some people had crossed the stream when there was less water, but now it was impossible. So, we turned back and returned all the way back to Montmélian (after riding 20 kilometers), and started on a highway. By the time we were back on a dedicated bike path, the sun had come out, and it began to get quite hot.
