Exploring France's Alpine and Pyrenean Ranges - From Mont Blanc to the GR10
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
France is not limited to the two mountain ranges that inspired me to create this article, since there is at least the Massif Central and the Jura. Also, there are plenty of walking and cycling destinations to go with the country's share of both the Pyrenees and the Alps, with Corsica being among them. However, it is two of France's frontiers that interest, with the Spanish and Andorran one being lined by the Pyrenees, while the Alps form part of the borders with Italy and Switzerland.
In its early days, it was the former of these that offered devilishly unmetalled and cobbled roads to be used as part of the Tour de France and mountain stages still add to the challenge of the world-famous cycle race today. Since those formative times, roads have been surfaced with tarmac and Alpine stages have been included. Maybe it is little wonder then that the race is one of the world's most celebrated sporting events.
France's official national visitor website gets the name Explore France, and it is complemented by France This Way, which goes about its task in a somewhat more accessible way, and About France. Remaining on the multi-region track, there also is Les Plus Beaux Villages de France, and this highlights special villages across the country. The French are very proud of their own language, yet each of these websites has an English version and that is where the links all lead. Maybe, the need for an international audience is what has brought about this multilingual approach.
Many local visitor information websites have English language versions too. The translations may be incomplete or imperfect in places, but credit has to be given for whatever efforts are made, and the use of Google's translation engine is better than nothing. There remain some websites with only a version in France's official language, so a knowledge of French and/or use of a translation tool may be needed. If anything, these may help with your getting to know the local language anyway.
French Alps
Like many other countries, France is further divided into regions and those regions get divided up into departments like others would have counties. For the Alps, there are two regions where they can be found: Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. Of course, that does mean that you cannot just browse what the region has to offer and there are departmental websites that compensate for that anyway, with Savoie & Haute-Savoie and Isére being the ones that you need. There is a visitor portal for the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region that takes a much more conventional course and contains all sorts of useful information, though it may be an independent effort rather than something sponsored by officialdom. Those for Hautes-Alpes and Alpes-de-Haute-Provence differ in this regard and so are well worth a look too.
It appears that the departments of Savoie & Haute-Savoie get the highest mountains for the 4810-metre-high Mont Blanc (or Monte Bianco as it is known to Italians, some of whom reckoning it should be theirs, but that is another story) is found near Chamonix, which has two visitor websites: Chamonix-Mont-Blanc and Chamonix.net. Specific accommodation providers include My French Chalet and Camping de la Mer de Glace. There is a lot of high altitude walking around here, with the Tour du Mont Blanc and the Haute Route to Zermatt in Switzerland being among them. That trek itself reaches a high point of 3710 metres above sea level, so there is plenty for the adventurous so long as they are prepared. To take on the highest point in France and in Western Europe, though, the use of a guide has to be recommended and there are other causes to use such services too.
France also has its national parks, and there naturally are a few in and around the Alps. There is the Vanoise National Park in Savoie, Parc National des Écrins shared between Isére and Haute-Alps and Parc National du Mercantour, with its Valley of Marvels, in Alpes-Maritimes. The last of these has an entry on Walking World if you fancy reading something about the place in English. Complementing the national parks are two regional nature parks: La Chartreuse (the visitor portal associated with Parc Naturel Regional Chartreuse, and it usefully is English too) in Isére, Parc Naturel Régional du Queyras in Haute-Alpes. Strictly speaking, the first of these is not alpine as such, but it comes so close that I am leaving it in and lower mountains can offer opportunities when loftier ones will not play ball.
The Alps are not all about spending time mountaineering among high mountains, since there are accessible lakes too. Savoie and Haute-Savoie alone have three major ones: Lac Annecy, Lac Bourget near Aix-les-Bains and Lac Léman (or Lake Geneva as it is otherwise known). Promotional photos leave one with the impression that they are treated rather like seaside resorts, albeit inland and with freshwater lakes instead. The water on Lac Léman can get rather choppy, too, so the sea analogy may not be as far-fetched as it might sound.
Loads of towns get their own visitor websites and many are in English too. Along the French shore of Lac Léman, Évian, Yvoire, Sciez-sur-Léman and Thonon-les-Bains are to be found and only the last of these only has a website in French. Évian is where the mineral water of the same name originates and the French Alps do have plenty of spa springs, so they have attracted visitors in the past, if not so much today. Around Parc National des Écrins, we find spread across two departments and regions Grenoble, Bourg d'Oisans, La Grave, Briançon, Embrun and Gap. The valley of Serre Chevalier is not far away from Pays des Écrins either. Both Guillestre and Saint-Veran are near Parc Naturel Régional du Queyras with the first of these having the rare distinction of an English language visitor portal when everywhere else around there appears to like their French.
For air travellers to Rhône-Alpes, Chambéry usefully has its own airport, as does Grenoble. However, flights from international destinations are more limited than the likes of Lyon or Geneva, so they are worth considering too. It also helps that Mountain Drop-offs and Altibus offer bus connections from many of these to popular destinations in Rhône-Alpes, while Deluxe Transfers, Chamonix Valley Transfers and Easybus all operate from Geneva. The Alps in Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur probably are best accessed by air travel using Nice as a point of arrival, and some of the airports in its neighbouring Alpine region can be of use too.
In recent decades, rail travel has become a valid option for British travellers thanks to the Channel Tunnel rail link to the continent. Therefore, we can look at websites like Snowcarbon, SNCB or SNCF for information on getting about in a more environmentally friendly way than going by plane and without needing to look at ferry crossings of the English Channel (or La Manche as the French call it) too. Ferries run across Lake Geneva (or Lac Léman) too, and CGN does this between Geneva and its neighbouring French spa towns along the shore of the same lake.
French Pyrenees
The Alps not only cross borders, but some of the component mountain chains even mark out international boundaries. That is even more true of the Pyrenees, and it only was a matter of centuries ago when the border between Spain and France was settled by a treaty between what then were two monarchies. Quite what that meant for Andorra is something that I have yet to learn, and there is a Spanish enclave surrounded by French territory too.
It is not just the mountains that cross lines on a map around here but also regions such as Basque and Catalonia. Folk in the French Basque and Catalan areas appear to be more comfortable with the idea of remaining French, though the same cannot be said for their Spanish counterparts. Another ethnic aspect of the area's history is Cathar Country, highlighting a former religious sect that was extinguished by the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church. These days it has a tourist train travelling through it to show you a number of its sights.
The Pyrenees also have a maritime influence, with the Atlantic at the Basque western end and the Mediterranean at the Catalan eastern end. With this coast-to-coast aspect to their nature, it should as no surprise that there are long trails between them, with the GR10 on the French side and the GR11 on the Spanish one. There is one national park on the French side too, as well as two regional nature parks: Parc Naturel Régional Pyrenées Ariégeoises and Parc Naturel Régional Pyrenées Catalanes.
Pyrenean boundary crossing does not stop with international borders as the mountain chain extends across different departments, though there is now a single region made from three predecessors: Occitanie. In all, there are five departments and these are Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, Haute-Garonne, Ariège and Pyrénées-Orientales.
The first of the above-listed departments is where you find the French Basque Country, and that is reflected in the name of its official visitor website. For a while, places on the coast such as Bayonne, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Biarritz and others would have attracted well-heeled holidaymakers but now are recovering after a slump caused by the apparently more glamorous Côte d'Azur. While there was a time when cultural glamour might have glittered for me, that has passed, and it is those places nearer to hill and mountain country that gets my vote despite some not themselves looking the prettiest (Fort William in Scotland comes to mind here). Pau may not be that near, but it does have an airport for international travel incursions, with most of these needing a change in Paris and Altiservice conveying any arrivals further afield, and there are towns and villages like Sare, Cambo-les-Bains, Espelette, Gourette (Eaux-Bonnes) and Saint-Jean-Pied-De-Port in Pays Basque that are nearer the Pyrenees than others. La Bastide Clairance is an inland conurbation that is not as near to the Pyrenees as those others.
Moving into the middle of the Pyrenees chain, we come to Lourdes. Most come here for religious reasons, since apparitions of the Virgin Mary to a young girl named Bernadette Soubirous took place in the late nineteenth century. The number of sick people who visit means that the local airport apparently is an example to all others when it comes to accessibility. With all the pilgrimage traffic, there probably is less of a focus on folk arriving for mountain walking, but I suppose that it is always worth a look. Straying not too far from Lourdes, we come to places in the midst of mountains such as Cauterets, Luz St. Sauveur, Gavarnie, Grand Tourmalet and Val d'Azun, right in the heart of winter sports country. Still in the mid-Pyrenees but further to the east is Foix, one of the smallest capitals of a department. Other places within its vicinity include Limoux and Mirepoix while along the Mediterranean coast, you will find places like Perpignan, Collioure and Banyuls sur Mer with the likes of Céret, Prades-Conflent, Villefranche-de-Conflent and Prats de Mollo la Prest found further inland with at least one of these getting a mention on the Conflent Canigo tourism website.
