Route des Grandes Alpes by motorbike - July 2023

We took 2 days to get to Lake Geneva (official start of the Route des Grandes Alpes, RDGA for short). We drove a small loop through Austria via Lindau at Bodensee and finally spent the night in Feldkirch-Sulz.
The following day, we went through the small Lichtenstein to Switzerland. The highlights here were the Klausen Pass, Furka Pass with Rhone Glacier and Grimsel Pass. It is really exhausting to keep to the prescribed speed limit of 80 km/h or less, the danger of being flashed is high.
We continued over the Susten Pass, St Gotthard Pass and Nufenen Pass and from then on unspectacularly to Lake Geneva.
The next day was the actual start of the RDGA, first of course at the "manhole cover" in Thonon-les-Bains. In the following days, we more or less followed the RDGA to Menton, where we naturally also took a picture of the "manhole cover" there 😊
The return journey then went via Monte Carlo, the Gorges du Verdon, the lavender fields of Provence, Combe Laval, Grenoble, Annecy, to Chamonix, where we took a break day. On this break day, we wanted to climb Mont Blanc, or rather the Aiguille du Midi at 3,842 metres. We were lucky in bad luck with subsequent good fortune 😊 Lucky that we got a ticket at all, usually they are sold out 1-2 days before when the weather is nice. Unlucky that everything looked very cloudy in the morning and therefore quite a few tickets were cancelled. Luck again, as the clouds slowly cleared around noon. All in all, a very nice day in Chamonix.
The journey home was less spectacular across Switzerland to Suhr, near the German border. On the last day we had the highlight of the Rhine Falls, the rest of the trip was via Black Forest and from Stuttgart back on the motorway towards home.
All in all, we found the RDGA very scenic, although most of the passes are not very challenging. We had good experiences with the language. Here, we got on almost everywhere with English, especially with young people. But maybe it helps to approach people with a few words of French, than to start directly with English, at least that was our experience.
Chapter:
0:00:00 Intro
0:00:19 Day 1 - Bamberg - Feldkirch-Sulz
0:04:17 Day 2 - Feldkirch-Sulz - Gadmen-Nessental
0:09:46 Day 3 - Gadmen-Nessental - Thonon-les-Bains
0:14:56 Day 4 - Thonon-les-Bains - Séez
0:21:08 Day 5 - Séez - Villar-d'Arêne
0:27:32 Day 6 - Villar-d'Arêne - Guillaumes
0:35:01 Day 7 - Guillaumes - Menton
0:41:29 Day 8 - Menton - Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey
0:45:16 Day 9 - Saint-Vallier-de-Thiey - Castellane
0:50:35 Day 10 - Castellane - La Mure
0:56:03 Day 11 - La Mure - Grenoble
1:02:22 Day 12 - Grenoble - Chamonix/Les Houches
1:08:05 Day 13 - Chamonix/Mont Blanc
1:11:19 Day 14 - Chamonix/Les Houches - Suhr
1:16:12 Day 15 - Suhr - Hallstadt
1:21:07 Outtro
Music:
01 Leave This World Behind (Instrumental Version) - Parellite
02 Physical (Instrumental Version) - Parellite
03 Tainted (Instrumental Version) - Red Revision
04 Losing My Mind (Instrumental Version) - Staffan Carlen
05 The Run - Middle And End
06 On the Shore - Shiver Disk
07 I've Got Issues - Nat Bonham
08 In A Hole (Instrumental Version) - Sven Karlsson
09 Firebird - Of Water
10 Walking On Water (Instrumental Version) - Gold Flow
11 Watch Me Disappear - Rockin' For Decades
12 Bring Me Up Higher (Instrumental Version) - Matt Sierra
13 Love Is Blind (Instrumental Version) - Coma Svensson
14 Love Is No Game (Instrumental Version) - Staffan Carlen
15 I Hold On (Instrumental Version) - Chris Coral
16 Past Life - Josef Falkenskold
17 Make Me Feel like You're Here Again (Instrumental Version) - Wellmess
18 Can't Stop This Show - Rockin' For Decades
GEMA-free music by:
- Epidemic Sound www.epidemicsound.com
Intro and Outtro:
- GEMA-free music by: / dagreinbott_terrasound