Cycling Lake Annecy! Exploring the “Venice of the Alps” on a Budget | France Road Trip

Discover Lake Annecy – “The Venice of the Alps”! In this episode we cycle from our campsite straight into Annecy old town, explore its canals, try lavender ice cream, visit the cathedral, find hidden quiet spots, and then ride the full 43km route around the lake. Beautiful mountain views, budget food finds, beach stops, pastry tasting and real life mid-September travel moments in France.

If you’re planning a road trip in France, camping, cycling holidays, or cheap weekend breaks in Annecy / Alps… this is for you.

Next episode → we travel to the medieval town of Avallon in Burgundy.

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Chapters
0:00 Intro – 3 Week France Road Trip Continues
0:36 Arriving in Lake Annecy
1:14 Cycling into Annecy Old Town
2:00 Tourist Office + Picking Our Walk Routes
2:50 Exploring the Canals – “Venice of the Alps”
3:45 St Pierre Cathedral & Churches of Annecy
5:30 Lunch in the Park + Quiche Tasting
6:25 Canal Walk – Lavender Ice Cream!
7:55 Afternoon Exploring Around Annecy
9:00 Weather Turns + Beach Bar Oasis
10:18 Next Day – Cycling the Opposite Direction
11:00 Private Chateau Discovery
11:40 Finding a Remote Beach for Lunch
12:45 Interesting Facts About Lake Annecy
14:42 Committing to Full Lake Cycle
15:34 Pastries + Cake Stop in Talloires
16:30 The Brutal Hill… and the Rewarding Downhill
18:00 Back into Annecy + Closed Cocktail Bar
18:45 Final Beers + Reflections on Annecy
19:21 Next Episode – Medieval Avallon

== About Us ==
We are Martin & Michelle and we early retired in 2023, our mission is to live life to the full, travel, see beautiful places, eat local food, drink local beer, meet interesting people.
We are early retired & we have to travel on a budget/frugal travel to ensure we can have as many adventures as possible, you would be surprised what you can do on a annual travel budget of £5000/€6000/$7000
Come along and see the world with us!

#francetravel #roadtripfrance #annecy #travelvlog #campervanroadtrip #vanlifevoyages #roadtripideas #roadtripfrance #frugaltravel #budgettravel #earlyretirement #retirementtravel

[Music] Join us as we continue our 3-w weekek road trip from Aras in the north to Champagne and Alsace regions, Jura Valley and Anacey at the foot of the Alps and back through central France. [Music] [Applause] [Music] Welcome back to the channel where we have been staying in the beautiful Lake Anacey. We traveled here from Eglish and if you haven’t checked out our previous episodes where we visit the beautiful town of Aras Commore and Eglish then do check them out. We’re staying at the Quad Deac campsite which translates to heart of the lake and the lake is literally just outside the back gate of the campsite. It’s only a 20inut cycle from a campsite to the town of Anacey and we’ll share our visit there with you in this episode. We’ll also do a cycle tour to other parts of the lake which we’ll share with you. Good morning Michelle. Good morning. Bikes at the ready. Yep. And see here we come. We planned to use the cycle track, but there was a cycle race on that day, so we had to avoid it for some of our route. We also decided to avoid the road and instead use the footpath. [Music] So, we’ve uh we’ve made it to Anacey. It’s a nice quick journey even with the obstacles we had to contend with trying to avoid cycling on the road. [Music] [Applause] [Music] We’re here in Anacey and we’ve just been to the tourist office and picked up this map. The guide has two walks that we’re going to do and we’re going to fuse them together. One is called the old town and its churches and the other is called Off thebeaten Path. So, we’re going to head off and get to the start of the walk down. This is the Pelle Do surprising or was to me anyway is that how shallow the water is. I wonder if you could do punting on it. Is it even too shallow for punting? Too shallow. Any seems to be a place that is tremendously busy. It’s midepptember. Can’t imagine what it would be like in the middle of the summer. This is Port Perier, the old gateway that you would use if you were coming to Anacey from Italy. So maybe all these people coming through here that were coming through earlier are Italians and these two are going back to Italy. Maybe. Ciao. We’re having weird weather at the moment. The sun has just come out and it started raining. Oh, look at that. Yeah, we’re not going there though. Oh, he said turn right. That’s on the churches tour. You can see too many churches, can you? Never get enough churches. The chateau looks pretty nice and it’s so quiet up here compared with down at the bottom of the hill. You can visit the chateau for €650 most of the year and then July and August is €7. But we haven’t got time today. [Music] You can see why this place gets compared to Venice with so many small canals around it. It is nicknamed the Venice of the Alps. [Music] This is the city’s cathedral, St. Pierre, built in 1534. As we find with all of these cathedrals we walk into, they’re a nice place to appreciate, but also to have a sit down and somewhere cool. And quite often admire the stained glass windows. I found in France so far are always extremely clean and colorful and well looked after. I’ve just read that the stained glass window was created in 1933. So, we had a little moment of confusion after we’d visited what is the cathedral. Now, we’ve confirmed it. Yeah, we came across this building behind us which is the NRAAM of which to me looks more like a cathedral. Do you think? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And it’s right next door to the cathedral. It’s very confusing when you come to a place that’s got so many churches. [Music] So, we’ve uh come to the end of uh walk one off the beaten path. An hour maybe. Yeah, no longer. We didn’t merge them in the end. We’ll just go and have a look at some of the other things on the other walk. Yeah, we’ll pick and choose on that. But first, we need some lunch. Yeah. So, we’ve come to this uh nice little park. Got our kichi. So Michelle has ton olive tuna and olive. I’ve gone very traditional with a kish lane. One of my dad’s favorites actually. So in a guide, but there are actually four walks. So we’ve decided to swap the old city and churches for this one that goes along the canal. And it’s called Give the Swan a Heads Up. All right. [Music] So, we thought it was time for an ice cream. Martin chose coffee and I’ve chose lavender, which is weird. I’ve never had it before. So, try it. You got no idea what lavender tastes like, dear. Well, like it smells. Oh, god. It is. It’s just exactly like smell. Oh, yeah. Not sure I like it too much for me. I’m more of a coffee man. We had a lovely afternoon strolling along the canal. It’s probably the prettiest part of the town. [Music] So perhaps the shallowess of this river is the time of year. Honestly, on that building over there, you see the tide mark at the bottom of the building. Maybe up to there. Situ tak [Music] straight away. That is really, really nice. And The biscuit base is just perfection. Buttery, buttery, buttery biscuit base. [Music] It’s nice crunchier base on that one. Yeah, it’s really really nice. Isn’t that Is it a bit like the chocolate I make at home? No, I don’t think it is. It’s um but it’s um it’s almost like kind of mousy in it context, but it’s nice. It’s not as powerful as that, but it’s So, we were looking for the toilet in this cafe. Couldn’t find it anywhere and the lady pointed over to the wall and I still couldn’t see it. That’s because it’s a hidden door. [Music] [Music] Everybody loves Lake Hennessy. Paul Suzanne painted it. Mark Twain wrote about it in his letters. And Bruce Willis is a diehard fan of it as he loves the holiday here. I’m a bit worried about that weather coming in. I have an umbrella, but it ain’t much good on the bike. As the bad weather was closing in, we decided to make a break for it and we cycled to the beach bar we’d seen earlier that day. We’ve made it to the lakeside bar. It’s called the Oasis and apparently it’s been here since 1948. And the other good thing is that they support drunk people. There’s a number of signs around the bar saying that. Question is, do they support drunk people on bicycles? It’s nice to chill out on the way home, isn’t it? It is. Yeah. It’s only 10 minutes from Anacey and then another 10 minutes on to our campsite. So, it’s perfect stop for us halfway. We’ve enjoyed our time in Anacey. It’s a very unique place with all of the canals and it’s even extra special with the lake and the beautiful mountain backdrop. We’ve got one more day here. So, tomorrow I think we’re going to head out again on our bikes, probably in the other direction around the lake. But before that, we got some beer to drink. Cheers. We’ll see you very soon. [Music] So, today we are setting out on the bike ride going the opposite direction to NY to see what we can find. [Music] We stopped off at a supermarket to get ourselves lunch for later. So, we decided that our first destination is a town called Dink, where there’s an island with a shadow. [Music] It turned out that the chatau was privately owned, so unless you know the owner, you can’t visit. We found a beach on the map that is at the bottom of the lake. So, we headed for there. Now, we get to see the lake as we cycle. Looks magnificent. We’ve been cycling downhill for well at least a mile, but we can’t really roll. We’re not getting the benefit of it because of the wind blowing at us. I think we’re coming to uh the end of the hill. And no word of a lie, it’s been about 12 13 minutes downhill. It’s been the hardest downhill I’ve ever had. It’s felt more like uphill. And you got electric bikes going in the other direction just cruising along. I’m not jealous really. [Music] We cycled as close to the beach as we could. So now we got to leave our bikes here up against this fence which we can’t get our locks on. But we’ve locked to each other. Hopefully that’ll stop any thiefs. This is a path to the uh beach. And as you can tell, you definitely getting your bike through here. What a stunning view. So, this is our lunch that we bought from the Superu Supermarket. We have a cheese and ham pastry. And then we’ve got which appears to be We thought looked like a pot pie, didn’t we? We did. Yeah, it’s not quite. It seems to be gammon with a pastry around there. The sign said pate. It’s definitely clearly not pate. So maybe French use the word pate for more than one thing. And I think we’ve got a a lovely environment to sit and eat. [Music] Michelle is going to give us some interesting facts about Lake Anacey whilst standing in Lake Anacey. Did you know that Lake Anacey is the second largest lake in France? And at its deepest point, it’s 80 m deep. And it’s long, its length is 14 km. And there is a circle track around it of 43 kilome. We’re probably as far away from Anacey as you could possibly be. Yeah. But this is a really nice spot. We have a choice. We can cycle back the way we came or we can cycle around the whole lake. If we continue our journey, we’re at the point of no return very quickly. We will be. Yeah. So, we quite like the idea, but in 2 hours it’s forecast to rain. So, it has an element of risk. [Music] We’ll uh keep you updated. [Music] So, we came around the corner and we was expecting to see two lots of bikes. So, four bikes here and there was only two. My heart was in my mouth. Wow. But ours are still here. Thank God. And we’re going to go all the way around the lake and do it. That’s our decision. And Michelle is on a promise. No, not that sort of promise. A promise of a cocktail. Yes. In the beach bar we went to yesterday. So, we got that to look forward to. So far, the route has been nice. It’s either been a bit downhill or it’s been flat. [Music] So, we’re taking a break from our ride and we stopped off in a place called Tolores at a cafe called Cafe Gazelli. Gazelle. Gazelle. Yeah. And Michelle has carrot cake. Yeah. And I have lemon cake. This place looked quite idilic. The cycle entrance has disappeared. Yeah. Through the town. Yeah. Or village. And so we had to go down the back street and then we came across this little area. There’s a cafe over there. There’s this cafe. There’s a little shop down there. And I think there’s a tobacco and another cafe around the corner. So, good place to stop. So, we will refuel and be off again [Music] going in the direction of an oh my god it’s just it was a hill to the cafe a little hill after and it just keeps going up and we’ve now gone into like where the road zigzags and we’ve taken a shortcut because it is so blooming steep. We’ve actually been pushing. We couldn’t cycle up there, could we? No way. So, we reached Traverse De Bluffy and um seems like it is the top of the hill and now I think we get to go downhill. [Music] after the hill. Some of the route was uh along the main road, but we seem to have discovered the um the cycle path back street. Let’s call it that. We should see this all the way to Anacey. Seems I spoke too soon. We’re going uphill. Michelle’s doing the oldfashioned stand up. Right. So, we’re up the top of that hill now. Surely it’s downhill all the way. And see, here we come. [Music] Well, we’ve made it to Anacey. How was it? Well, that hill was almost a killer. But the reward you get as you go down and quite quite a long way. Really fast. Quite hairy though. Yeah. Yeah. Scary. You could go faster. So, our plan for a cocktail has failed. It’s uh it’s closed. It’s not our oasis tonight. So, we managed to find somewhere for a drink at last. There were about three beach bars on the way from Anacey to our campsite and they’re all closed on a Monday night. Monday is not a good night. There was one that was obviously just closed. All people drinking beer. Actually got to the bar and she said, “Be mate.” So anyway, we do deserve this beer cuz uh we’ve had a excellent cycle. So, at the moment, our plan is to go to Avalon um as our first stop, and we’ve got about three stops before we have to get our train back to the UK. So, thank you for watching. We hope that you’ve enjoyed this episode and if you did, give it a thumbs up cuz it really helps the channel and consider subscribing and we’ll see you on our travels in our next episode. Bye for now. Bye. Join us in our next episode where we visit the beautiful medieval town of Avalon in the Burgundy region of France. [Music] [Applause] [Music]