Mountain biking – Martin & Joy's Blog

Chamrousse

Sun/Mon 24/25^thAug.

More years ago than I care to admit to, back in my early days as a field computer systems engineer with Hewlett Packard (HP), I spent a lot of time in Grenoble, France. HP had a engineering training centre there that covered everything about computer systems hardware, peripherals, telecoms (that used to mean RS232 in those days), and networking (yes, we had interconnected computers back in 1981, though no-one quite knew what to do about it). Some years, I’d spend enough weeks out of the country in Grenoble to allow me to claim back tax (that’s in the days when such allowances were available – sadly no more) over a tax year.

HP was a great enough company then to even pay for your family to go away with you if you were away on a long (e.g. 4 weeks) training course and opted to take your own (company) car. And so, Joy and Kathryn (pre-Oliver days!) came away to Grenoble almost as many times as I did, staying in the Hotel Alpha in Meylan – on the outskirts of the city. The Alpha used to have kitchenette apartments which we always managed to stay in, so the cost to us as a family was only marginally more than living back home.

We came to really like Grenoble (despite the fact that my car was broken into and my camera was stolen just nearby), and we had plenty of time to explore it and the environs. Grenoble is more or less right at the entrance to the French Alps. It’s in the Haute-Savoie region, and there are the vast National Parks of Ecrins; Vanoise; Chartreuse (yes, where the green stuff comes from); and the Vercors. Not to mention spitting distance to the ski resorts of Les Deux Alpes and Alpe d’Huez, and within easy reach of the Tarentaise Valley with the major resorts of Les Trois Vallees; Valmorel; La Plagne; Les Arcs; Tignes and Val d’Isere. But the very closest ski resort to Grenoble is Chamrousse, just 50 minutes drive from Meylan.

In terms of high resorts, Chamrousse isn’t one of them: The villages of Chamrousse – Le Recoin, and Roche Le Bèranger (which have recently been given the trendy names of Chamrousse 1650 and Chamrousse 1750, respectively) are at a pretty respectable altitude, though the mountains don’t really reach much above 2250m and so the skiing is consequently limited.

Chamrousse has fond memories for us from 1982’ish when we were probably last here, and so it’s long overdue a visit. There happens to be an Aire for motorhomes (only introduced in 2012), with water supply and drainage, and electricity – all for a fairly nominal fee. And so, here we are in the wonderful mountain air, with the summer holiday season just ending and very few people here. The van even made it up the steep & windy mountain road without too many complaints.

It’s not all roses, however; in our planning, we completely neglected to take account of the temperature at this altitude, it having been fairly warm lower down. So last night with fog all around us, and the mercury dipping to around 7c, I realised I’d not brought any cold-weather clothes with me. Even my duvet is summer-orientated, so it was a chilly night.

Mon 25^th Aug.

Call me a wimp, but I put the heating on in the van this morning, much to Joy’s disgust. It was only 10°C indoors.

Whilst here, we’d hoped to do some mountain biking and – perhaps – some walking. I guess we’ve missed the ideal time for walking, which must be June – when all the alpine flowers are at their best. Also, the forecast isn’t brilliant: The sunny and 17°C forecast is not in evidence. It’s cold, overcast and there have been a few spots of rain. The forecast for tomorrow & Wed is heavy rain showers.

So today’s the day for all the activities. Out with the bikes, and onto the gentle “cross-country” trail that runs from Chamrousse 1650 to Chamrousse 1600 with only small vertical deviations to test our altitude fitness. The sun came out, and we stopped to take photos of the ponies at the small riding school, with snow-spattered mountains in the background.

There are also a number of downhill mountain biking trails here (another reason why we’re here), ranging in difficulty from green, through blue to red, then black. Like ski piste difficulty grading, mountain bike trail grading can be every bit as inconsistent from one place to another. We took our bikes up the gondola ski lift to the top, intending to take the green run – which should be enough of a challenge for Joy.

The map shows a blue run off the top, running along the ridge before splitting off onto red and green alternatives. We didn’t find the green trail and ended up doing the blue for the entire 1^st section. Joy struggled with this, but soldiered-on. In my opinion, the blue was equivalent to red+ on the trails I’m used to, so there were some gnarly sections. Quite a few, in fact.

Eventually, we did find the green trail lower down. It was no easier than the blue we’d already done. Fun for me, but hard on Joy. We did get down without any incidents and lived to tell the tale.

Internet access is no easier in France than it was in Germany. Worse still, my phone now seems to be playing-up and switching-off the phone signal so I can’t make/receive calls/text messages. I have to keep rebooting it to overcome the problem. However, the Tourist Information office here has a fantastic, free WiFi point. All I need now is to find some time to park myself in the building to do everything I need to do. These last several blog updates come to you courtesy of Chamrousse TI.

Heiligenstadt, Bayern

Sat /Sun, 9th/10th Aug.

You may have noticed a particularly beery theme developing over the last several days? Time for a change.

On the town map of Bamberg, there is a Mountain Bike Centre highlighted, about 40 mins drive to the East. Whilst we’ve used our bikes a fair amount, we’ve not actually given them any kind of workout on a proper mountain bike type of trail. So after a short drive, we’ve set up temporary home at the Stellplatz in Heiligenstadt – and very pleasant it is too. It’s actually a car park, just inside the town boundary and just off the main road. By the Parkplatz, traffic has already slowed down to the regulatory 50kph within towns. Not that there is much traffic. A few tractors bringing in the grain from the fields and very little else. We’re alongside the Leinleiter – a small stream at this point, though it does get bigger further downstream. The most noise we can hear is from the stream.

It;s a very small town. There’s a small supermarket, hair-dresser, Bäckerei, Doner Kebab shop and 3 Gaststätte. There are two other camper vans in the car park, also loaded with bikes. The Stellplatz is free, although there are no facilities. Definitely great for a couple of nights.

BONG, went the catholic church bells every quarter-hour. But they had the good grace to stop overnight. Mass at 08:30 on Sunday was preceded by “untuneful cacophony on four bells”. It was also followed by the ringing of the single bell of the Evangelical church for a quarter of an hour or so. No way was any one of the 100 or so inhabitants going to unknowingly miss the appropriate service.

There was a helpful mountain bike route sign by the car park, showing 3 different waymarked trails of 32km, 44km and 56km lengths. To be honest, I didn’t have any great expectations of any of these being really fun rides (i.e. lots of twisty singletrack, technical bits, interesting descents – the sort of features you get at any Welsh mountain bike centre) as my experience is that trails in Germany tend to be on the longish, steepish climbs, not very interestingish side.

Heiligenstadt MTB trails. We did Route 3 – Matzenstein.

Joy was a bit concerned about the length of the (32km) trail, but the map clearly showed any number of places where we could take a short cut. With a photo of the trail map on my phone we set off.

It was indeed steep. The first couple of kms of climbing were a bit brutal, but most of it was on road or Feldweg (roads between the fields that are often asphalted). It then evened-out a bit but without any exciting bits.

The most interesting bit was a steep descent down what we felt was a truly ancient valley in the forest, with moss-covered bare cliff faces to our side. One could imagine ancient peoples having lived and died here [I’m reading an interesting book at the mo called “The Old Ways”. It’s about ancient paths and byeways, both on land and sea (marked on charts) with a slightly lyrical premise of the path or trail holding a memory of people’s passing that can be felt down the ages].

This steep descent marked 3 things:

We’re right by Veilbronn, approximately half way point, and
It’s lunchtime, and
There just happens to be a convenient Gasthof.

Mountain Biking and big meals don’t normally go together well, and this was no exception. We ate too much. We didn’t intend to – ordering one starter and one main between the two of us – it just turned-out that way.

When we resumed the trail, we found that we were hitting the steepest climbs of all on a full stomach. Needless to say we didn’t exactly fly up them.

The rest of the trail was pleasant enough, but pretty uninteresting and we were glad to get back to base.

That night, another thunderstorm with accompanying downpours caught up with us, and I lay awake for some time wondering if the Leinleiter was going to overflow. Needless to say it didn’t!

Mountain biking & Roman roads

Yesterday, we did a bike ride. The sheet of paper giving the rough route, kindly provided by the campsite said “It’ a easy route”. They lied. The first couple of hundred metres should have been a big enough omen of what was to come.

It would have been a great ride but for the fact that recent & current forestry work had all but destroyed much of the trails, with 3 foot deep tyre & caterpillar track ruts in many places.

Oh, and the impossibly steep climbs! They’re ok; you can push up them, but when you have impossibly steep climbs with huge ruts it’s a different matter. Joy started getting concerned about the thought that we’d have to come back down those climbs going in the opposite direction!

In truth, it was a great ride with the highest point being at 1210m above sea-level. The weather held out long enough for us to have a picnic in the sunshine at a slight clearing at the top. We never met a single other person on the trail except – right at the top, we saw the couple from the caravan opposite us at the campsite: they had walked up with their dog. We went on a few hundred metres before heading back. Oddly, we didn’t pass them again so not sure where they went (but they were back in their van last night!).

In some parts, we followed the Roman road (Flaminia Militare): some parts exposed and protected by signs, but most of it still buried. Perhaps a good thing as the unprotected parts have been eroded and most of the stones washed away where they are liberally strewn across the trail.

Here’s the route we followed.