Lake Annecy

The journey through the full length of France seems quite insignificant when done as we have. A five hour drive from Calais to Dijon yesterday, a four hour journey to Lake Annecy this morning and then three hours down to Savona in Italy tomorrow ready for our ferry to Corsica on Monday morning.

We stayed on an aire last night and will tomorrow but tonight we're on a campsite where we'll get at least one shower in three days!

We're on Camping Lanfonnet which charges a premium for being on the lake while offering no views of it. I booked it via Pitch Up where it's rated 8.6 out of 10. Reviewers on Google seem to like it less and it has 2.5 stars out of five. Criticism seems to be of an unfriendly welcome, which I experienced, and noise from the restaurant across the road which is open until 1am. I booked based on the Pitch Up rating, not having looked it up on Google. I think we may be far enough away from the restaurant that it might not bother us.

Lake Annecy is a beautiful azure blue and people are swimming from the municipal beaches. Wherever you go around the lake there's a charge to swim from the designated beaches. The campsite reception advised that if we wait until the local beach 'closes' at 5.30pm then we can swim for free. However we joined a fair few other folks swimming from the shore where it's forbidden to do so. The water was lovely - clear and not too cold at all.

We're not even going to scratch the surface of what Lake Annecy offers while using it as a one-night stopover but my initial impressions are of how similar in appearance and feel it is to the larger Italian lakes. If you feel the Italian lakes are a bit too far it'd be a great alternative - just do more thorough research than I did about your campsite choice.

It's still 29°C at just after 6pm. Dinner is on, beers have been consumed and I'm about to suggest we uncork the red wine (and by uncork I mean open the five litre box!)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

West coast of France campervan tour

Image
Having decided there's no need to travel half way across a country between camping stays, to mix things up a bit, this summer's fortnight holiday will be spent along France's West coast, starting at Ile d'Oleron and then heading a couple of hours south for each of our other two bases. We were worried about a reported two hour delay near to the Folkestone Channel Tunnel terminal and so, before the Dartford Crossing, we put back our scheduled train by 90 minutes. The traffic was just clearing as we got nearer and as it turns out we'd have been ten minutes early for our original booking. The delay meant it was already 10.30pm by the time we were on French roads and wouldn't reach our chosen aire, Neufchattel en Bray, until 1am. Unfortunately the aire was completely full and so we had no choice but to continue. We arrived at our second choice of aire at 3am. The two extra hours drive through the night meant two hours less the following day though. We d...
Read more

Probably the best aire in France

Image
  Driving days are rarely exciting - we're not ones for stopping to sight see when we've an ultimate destination to get to. So the discovery of La Chute du Grand Baou for our pre-ferry crossing stopover was the best surprise.  While Tony was driving south through France I was researching aires that would leave us with a short drive the next morning and I had a shortlist of three. La Chute du Grad Baou was top choice because of a promised waterfall. I thought I could make out people swimming in one of the website's photos and I'm never one to turn down an opportunity for wild swimming.  We arrived in Brignoles at around 5pm and popped into Lidl to do a small shop for food and wine for that evening. Then we filled up with diesel before heading 15 minutes north to the aire. A short dirt track leads down to a small restaurant with tables outside. To the side are three huge terraced fields for motorhomes. There was one other motorhome there already, hugging the shade from th...
Read more

Valencia

When I came to add our latest trip, I noted that the last blog entry was October 2022. Oops. We've been much better at keeping our YouTube channel  up to date. There you'll find at least half a dozen videos from the summer of 2023 when we went 'Huttopia Hopping' - that is to say we stayed on six different Huttopia campsites over our six-week road trip, from the Atlantic coast, across the Pyrenees and over to the Mediterranean. Back to the present and we're just home from nine nights on the continent. Our ultimate destination was Valencia where we spent five nights at Devesa Gardens.  We didn't rush our drive down, though I guess some would say we did. We stayed on a Camping-Car Park about an hour south of Paris for night one. Knowing it would be 10/11pm when we went through Paris we thought the roads would be quiet. They were not and I wouldn't ever want to go this way again.  The Camping-Car Park at Souppes Sur Loing was a nice peaceful site. Only two other...
Read more