I’m back-dating this posting because I realize I never posted anything about my stay in Annecy, France.

Annecy is beautiful small city south of Geneva situated on a picturesque lake. While it’s touristy and there are throngs of people that visit I really enjoyed my stay there and would go back. I really enjoyed walking around the city and several of the restaurants. And cycling in the area is excellent. There’s a fantastic route that goes along the lake. You can spend hours on that route alone, but the other ride I did there was to bike up to the top of Semnoz.

The Sunday of the weekend I was there turned into one helluva day of cycling. It had its ups and downs both literally and figuratively. I’ll explain…

From Annecy to the top of Semnoz is up hill all the way. It’s quite a climb. But then that’s half the point of choosing such a route. It’s the challenge of it. I went by way of Leschaux to get there. The grade at 4 to 5% is not bad for the first part to Leschaux. From there, it gets interesting and a fair bit harder.

You can see my progression up to the summit in the photos here. Starting from Annecy down by the lake and then winding my way up to Leschaux. The ride up to Leschaux is not too difficult but it makes a nice spot to take a little break in prep for the next leg. There’s a bar/restaurant there where lots of cyclists take a pitstop. You can see a bunch of other riders taking it easy in one the photos.

From Leschaux the climb gets a lot steeper. You can see in the photo right below the one at the restaurant that after a bit more climbing I’m looking back down on the small town of Leschaux. You’ll need to click to view the photo because otherwise the town is too small in the thumbnail.

More climbing … you can see the grade gets to 8% pretty frequently. Then finally, the summit. There’s a couple of restaurants and a ski resort at the top. I pulled in for a coke and a sandwich. It was actually pretty chilly at the top. I was glad I had some gear I could change into for the ride back down.

After starting back, now the bad news: I got a broken spoke on the descent! Ugh! A broken spoke means the wheel was way out of balance and so the wheel wobbled horribly and rubbed the brake on every revolution. That made for a long, shaky trip back to Annecy. Thank God it was almost entirely down hill into Annecy.

Click thru here for route map to the summit, from Annecy.