OurTour Split in Chambery, France

Zagan the motorhome is hooked-up to the electric and loving being on a huge campsite pitch for a few days. He’s at the municipal campsite Le Savoy in Challes-Les-Eaux (N45.55143, E5.98408), just outside Chambery. He’s here because the OurTour team are splitting up. Jay is heading for London to do a bit of filming work, while Ju is staying in France with Zagan – otherwise his insurance is invalid (and he doesn’t like being left alone in a strange place!).

Camping Municipal Le Savoy, Challes-Les-Eaux, France

Jay’s imminent departure for England brought us down from our mountain pass high at Col de la Croix de Fer, well that and a brimming toilet cassette. We’d already been in touch with the campsite at Challes-Les-Eaux to make sure they had space for us (it’s still out of season here, so of course there would be space) but mainly to check out connections to Chambery. 

After our run on the Col, the cloud rolled in making our descent a rather squeaky bum moment. We could hardly see the road in front of us, which is not good when the road showing on Satnav looks like a plates of spaghetti. In the end we had to resort to first gear and creep our way down off the pass, stopping a couple of times to give Zagan, and us, a rest.

Once off the mountain pass, we were back to reality with a long straight road with white lines down the middle – oh how we miss those when in the mountains! To our right was the train line, to our left was a river Arc, to its left the toll motorway. It would have cost us €8.80 to take the toll road, but we weren’t in a rush as the campsite reception didn’t open until 4pm.

Being a French National Holiday most of the supermarkets were closed, so when we spotted an open one we dived in to grab a few supplies – you never know how far away a campsite is from decent shop. Arriving in Challes-Les-Eaux the name suddenly made sense, this was a spa town, and quite a nice one at that. And just a few steps from the camping was the obligatory boulangerie, boucherie and a little supermarket. This will do perfectly, especially as the campsite is on the ACSI discount scheme, so is only costing €18 a night.

The clouds never lifted, which normally isn’t an issue, but when you are surrounded by mountains you can see how low they are as they cut off the hunks of granite in their prime. As we pitched up the heavens opened and thunder roared overhead. The following morning the skies were still grey as we walked the five minutes to the bus stop. For the princely sum of €1.40 each, we sat back and enjoyed Chambery rush hour traffic until we reached our destination – the train station.

With final instructions on how to empty the loo (something I have never done before, it’s a blue job in our van) Jay headed off to his platform and was gone. I decided to wander around Chambery and see the city that I have flown into several times on skiing holidays, but never actually set foot in.

Palais de Justice – Science looks as peed off with the rain as I was at this point!

Within ten minutes I had been stopped and asked directions. I explained in my best Frenglish that I wasn’t French, but instead of asking one of any of a number of folks around me who probably were, the chap just repeated where he wanted to go. After the third attempt I realised he wanted to go to the Palais de Justice, and as that was the only place I had been so far, he was in luck. After pointing him in the right direction, I headed off to see some more places in case I got asked again.

I bet these fellas aren’t noticing the rain

The old town of Chambery is a bit of a rabbit warren of narrow alleys. The alleys lead off the main streets which are usually four stories high with vaults/arches on the bottom floor. Most of the vaults are taken up with shops, but there are loads without shops in, these are either an alley, or gated entrances to the buildings behind. I made a point of getting myself lost a few times as the city isn’t that big. One time I ended up in a small courtyard (about the size of Zagan) with four storey buildings on each side, I was about to leave when I spotted a tiny alley, so I put on my big girl pants and ducked into it, emerging into a street I had already been on – phew!

One of the vaults being used as a cheese shop – let’s just say you could smell it before you saw it!

Having done minimal research about Chambery (I picked up a map at the campsite reception) the only thing I knew about the place was it had a famous elephant fountain. Despite wandering around for a while, I still hadn’t stumbled across it, but then I noticed little brass discs on the floor with a picture of an elephant on them. A tourist route for sure, but by now the skies were going from grey to black and I wanted to see the elephants before I got soaked.

The castle of the Dukes of Savoie.

As the heavens opened, it seemed appropriate to seek shelter in the cathedral. Inside as my eyes adjusted to the dim light I was amazed by the intricate carvings on the walls and ceiling, considering how plain the place looked on the outside. Hang on a minute, those aren’t carvings! It was a very clever trompe l’oeil (deceives the eye) piece of artwork. I think I was now even more impressed.

My elephant quest took me past groups of junior school children cycling along behind their teachers. They were all clad in yellow high visibility vests, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a gilets jaunes protest as they looked like they were having too much fun. I could never imagine a school bike trip around city streets back home, we had to make do with our gaining our ‘cycling proficiency badge’ on the school netball court.

Finally I reached my goal. The fountain of elephants is also known as ‘the fountain of the bottomless four’, as each elephant only has a head and front legs. Water gushes from the trunks of the four. It was built in homage to General de Boigne who earned his money in India (hence the elephant connection) and was a major benefactor of Chambery – he’s the fella on the top of the fountain.

After a good check of all four elephants to make sure none of them was sporting a swastika like the ones at the Carlsberg factory in Copenhagen (think they are still my favourite elephants), it was time to go. I was now suitably drenched and looking forward to a sit on the warm bus back to the campsite. By the time I got back to Zagan, Jay was in Paris and making his way to the Eurostar. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly you can travel across this continent, compared to how slowly we do.

Luckily for me, Jay must have taken the rain with him, because this morning I woke to blue skies. I jumped out of the huge Hymer drop-down bed (well it is when you have it all to yourself) and put on my running gear. I had a date with a run to Mont St Michel, the chapel on top of the hill overlooking Challes-Les-Eaux. Everything was going well, apart from I had forgotten my water bottle, as I followed the signposts telling me it was two hours to the top. 

The campsite is next to l’aerodrome and as the sun came out, so did the gliders. Mont St Michel chapel is just visible on the top of the hill.

Then there were no signs for ages and the path started to go downhill. Then further downhill, then finally after half an hour a sign – Mont St Michel 2hrs 15 mins. I must have got lost but at least I was on the right path now, or so I thought. My nice morning run had turned into an hour of sweating, with my hands on my knees scrabbling up a steep rocky path – that wasn’t the plan. Eventually I popped out at the top by the chapel and stood to admire the view while I got my breath back.

Proof I made it!

The view from the top looking over towards Chambery and Lac du Bourget on the far right

Not wanting to scramble back down the way I had come up, I checked out maps.me for an alternative path back to the town. The hillside was criss-crossed with them, so I picked one going on the other side of the hill and set off. Almost immediately I lost the path, or rather I was on the wrong path. So I nipped through the forest and picked up the one I needed.

At this point I will say my big lesson learned today is one that we use in Zagan all the time – if it’s not sign-posted don’t follow it. Usually this applies to our satnav, who loves a sneaky short-cut down a narrow lane instead of a perfectly good wide road. In this case, I was following maps.me assuming it would be a nice wide path I could run on, it wasn’t. It was worse than the path up. The rain from the day before made the moss and rocks extra slippy and it felt like every plant overhanging the path had thorns on it. My trail shoes were caked with mud and offered no grip as I slid on rocks and clung onto trees to hold myself upright. All the while cursing myself for being so stupid and wondering what I would do if I did hurt myself (the answer being, I’d probably have to ring Jay in London to get me help!).

After a large amount of swearing, picking thorns out of my arms, hands and legs and holding back of tears (there was no point in crying, I needed to get back), I reached the bottom of the ‘path’, I was greeted with the above sign warning people not to attempt to climb it unless they had the right equipment (does three jelly babies count?). They probably didn’t need to put a sign at the top as no one would be stupid enough to try and come down it! Eventually after over three and a half hours I made it back to Zagan, caked in mud and blood and wishing I had never heard of the Zermatt Half Marathon (which is now only 23 days away).

I’m now starting to get seriously worried about it. My knee is holding up fine, but being out of action for so long has caused me to lose a lot of my fitness. The furthest I have run since I fell is 13km which was flat (I had to walk a lot of the Alpe d’Huez run last week). Zermatt will be 21km, uphill at altitude. It’s going to take some serious mind games and training to get me up there, but we’re doing it to raise money for the British Lung Foundation and people have already sponsored us, so there’s no backing out now. However, if you ever hear me talk about running up a mountain again – please feel free to shout at me!

Ju x