Stage 10 Tour de France 2027

Food and Drink to Accompany Stage 10 Tour de France 2027

Stage 10 is in the Alps, so Savoyarde specialities would be the best accompaniment - fondue, raclette, pierrade and tartiflette.

Fondue is usually made with comté and emmental cheese, garlic, white wine and kirsch. You prong a cube of stale bread with a long fork, dip it into the fondue and twist it round and round so the cheese stays in place, then bring it to your plate. It's often accompanied by boiled potatoes and salad.

Vin de Savoie is traditionally drunk with a Savoyarde meal, but maybe you'd like to upgrade to a more refined wine. The Rhône valley is close by and Côtes du Rhône might be a better bet than Vin de Savoie.

Côtes du Rhône Villages is from the southern Rhône region. It includes wines made from grapes grown in villages such as Cairanne and Gigondas.

Buy a case of Côtes du Rhône.

Annecy

Annecy is a historic town on the shore of Lake Annecy, in the Haute Savoie département of France. It has a population of about 52,000. It is sometimes called 'the Venice of the Alps', because two canals and the little river Thiou run through it.

There was a Roman settlement at what is now the adjacent town of Annecy-le-Vieux (not to be confused with the historic centre of Annecy, known as Vieil Annecy).

Annecy was one of the residences of the Counts of Geneva from the C10th. It passed to the counts of Savoy in 1401.

When the Protestant faith spread through the region, Annecy was a centre of the Catholic counter-Reformation. The old Bishopric of Geneva was transferred to Annecy in 1535. Francois de Sales was a celebrated bishop of Annecy from 1602 to 1622.

At the time of the French Revolution, Annecy was conquered and became part of France. It was returned to the House of Savoy after the defeat of Napoleon (1815), then became part of France for good under Napoleon III in 1860.

One of the historic buildings in the centre of Annecy is the Palais de l'Isle. It is a Medieval building which dates from around 1325, and has served as a fortress, a prison, a courthouse, and a mint. Today, it houses a local history museum.

Parts of the Château d'Annecy (in particular la Tour de la Reine) date from the 1200s. The château was the home of the Counts of Geneva, and now houses l'Observatoire Régional des Lacs Alpins (Regional Observatory of Alpine Lakes).

In the 1800s, Annecy manufactured linen, glass, cutlery, and leather. Later, paper was also made here, there was a bell foundry at Annecy-le-Vieux, and Salomon skis had a factory near the lake.

Today, tourism and services are the largest part of the local economy.

Lake Annecy

Lake Annecy (le Lac d'Annecy, or 'le lac bleu') is 14.6km long, and has a circumference of around 38km. It's not the biggest lake in France, as it's smaller than the Lac du Bourget, but it's the most beautiful.

The lake formed about 30,000 years ago, at a time when great Alpine glaciers were melting.

The lake is supplied with water by seven streams, and by a powerful underwater spring called the Boubioz. Water runs out of the north end of the lake, into the Thiou, which becomes the Fier, which in turn flows into the Rhone. It takes 4 years for all the water in the lake to be replaced.

The average depth of Lake Annecy is 41.5m, and it's 81m down to the deepest point. The water temperature gets up to 22C in July.

The lake narrows to 800m between Talloires and Duingt. To the north of that point is what's known as the Grand Lac, which has shallower shores dotted with villages and vineyards; to the south is the Petit Lac, with steep, wooded slopes.

In the 1950s, Lake Annecy became quite polluted, particularly from sewage from the surrounding hotels. A decision was made to treat all sewage properly, and in 1957, a filtering plant was built at Cran. This helped the lake water to regain its purity, and over the space of 20 years, the depth of visibility increased from 4.6 to 8m. The level of nitrates in the lake water is particularly low.

Activities on and in the lake include boating, rowing, sailing, swimming, fishing, diving, windsurfing, and water skiing. The Fête du Lac, with fireworks, takes place on the first Saturday in August.

Mark Twain wrote of Lake Annecy:

'It is a revelation. It is a miracle. It brings the tears to a body's eyes it is so enchanting. That is to say, it affects you just as all things that you instantly recognize as perfect affect you - perfect music, perfect eloquence, perfect art, perfect joy, perfect grief. It stretches itself out there in the caressing sunlight, and away towards its border of majestic mountains, a crisped and radiant plain of water of the divinest blue that can be imagined. All the blues are there, from the faintest shoal water suggestion of the color, detectable only in the shadow of some overhanging object, all the way through, a little blue and a little bluer still, and again a shade bluer till you strike the deep, rich Mediterranean splendor which breaks the heart in your bosom, it is so beautiful.'

'And the mountains, as you skim along on the steamboat, how stately their forms, how noble their proportions, how green their velvet slopes, how soft the mottlings of sun and shadow that play about the rocky ramparts that crown them, how opaline the vast upheavals of snow banked against the sky in the remoteness beyond - Mont Blanc and others - how shall anybody describe? Why, not even a painter can quite do it, and the most the pen can do is to suggest.'

Skiing Made Easy

Skiing Made Easy is a practical guide to learning to ski based on many happy seasons of ski teaching.

It takes you through the beginner's progression from snowplough to parallel turns, starting at the very beginning and not assuming any prior knowledge.

The book suggests relevant exercises to develop and improve your skills. Common faults are identified, along with the best ways to correct them.

'By the way' sections contain information about many of the little things that people assume you just know, but you may not.

'This is the book I wish I'd had when I started skiing' - reviewer on Amazon.

How to buy:

• get the paperback direct from the author at ValThorensGuide (cheapest paperback option)
• order the paperback from Amazon
• order the ebook from Amazon

Skiing Made Easier

Skiing Made Easier is the follow-up to Skiing Made Easy, and picks up from where the first book left off.

The first chapter is Refining Your Parallel Turns.

The chapters on ski technique beyond basic parallel turns are Carving, Short Turns, Bumps and Off Piste.

There are then further chapters on Avalanche and Mountain Safety, Ski Psychology, Physical Preparation, Ski Servicing and Alpine Wildlife.

As in Skiing Made Easy, common faults are identified and exercises suggested to correct them and to develop your skills.

'By the way' passages contain bits of skiing knowhow that could otherwise take years to pick up.

How to buy:

• get the paperback direct from the author at ValThorensGuide (cheapest option)
• order the paperback from Amazon

The Amazon URLs are affiliate links.

Côte de Domancy

Domancy is a village and a commune, with 1,904 people living in the commune. It has an attractive church, the Eglise Saint-André de Domancy, which dates from 1717, with an older clock tower.

Much of the climb is wooded. There will be lots of spectators, including perhaps some four-legged ones.

The Côte de Domancy was the scene of one of Bernard Hinault's triumphs. Here, he dropped Baronchelli, and went on to a solo victory in the road race, to become the 1980 World Champion.

The road is now named after the French cyclist. It's called la Route Bernard Hinault.

Passy

Passy is a town in the Arve valley near to Sallanches and Saint-Gervais-Mont-Blanc. It has 11,350 inhabitants.

For a long time people here lived a pastoral life. The first tourism was based around the Plateau d'Assy, and visitors went there hoping to improve their health and well-being. Marie Curie (d. 1934) spent her last days in Passy, at the sanitorium of Sancellemoz.

There's a little ski resort at Passy-Plaine-Joux.

The Lac Vert is a lake in the commune of Passy. Its water is very clear, with a green tint.

Sallanches

Sallanches is a town of 16,000 people in the Haute Savoie département of France, just a few kilometres down the glacial valley of the river Arve from Chamonix. The river Sallanche joins the Arve on the edge of the town. Sallanches is sandwiched between the Aravis mountains to the west, and the Mont Blanc range to the east.

The names Sallanches is derived from the Franco-Provencal 'chalanche', and signifies a steep slope prone to avalanches. The town belonged to the House of Savoie from 1355 until the French Revolution, and again from 1814 (defeat of Napoleon) until 1860 (when much of Savoie was transferred to France).

Traditionally, Sallanches was a town of precision engineering. It is the home of Dynastar skis, founded in 1963 as a collaboration between the Dynamic and Starflex ski brands. Today, it serves as a commercial centre for the neighbouring ski resorts.