And I will leave discussing the ins and outs and possible scenarios for potential (stage) winners to more capable bloggers out there…
More interesting for my followers – or so I keep telling myself, but who am I kidding? – would be the announcement my own Tour de France 2024.
Yes, I would prefer another Giro d’Italia, but that means I will have to forfeit (many) cycling adventures to be able to be finance that in a few years.
So, I’m happy to announce that the location of the Tour de France 2024 base camp will be in…
* drumroll *
… Albertville!
To be more precise: we found a charming apartment in the medieval town of Conflans, which is part of Albertville.
You may remember the XVI-th Winter Olympics being hosted by Albertville and no less than 9 other venues in the area: Courchevel, La Plagne, Les Arcs, Les Menuires, Les Saisies, Méribel, Pralognan-la-Vanoise, Tignes and Val d’Isère.
Of those, I’ve only not yet been in Pralogan-la-Vanoise, although Courchevel deserves a rematch, i.e. a proper climb of its own and not a flyby after a murdering climb up Col de la Loze.
Albertville is – like Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne – a subprefcture of the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
The town is at the confluence of the Isère and its tributary Arly, marking the junction of the valleys of the Tarentaise, Beaufortain, Val d’Arly and the Combe de Savoie.
Because of this geographical location, Albertville has earned the nickname of Carrefour des Quatre Vallées.
As base camp for my Tour de France 2024, Albertville is as strategically located as is Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne.
I first tried to get a reservation for an apartment in Bourg-Saint-Maurice, situated at the base of the climbs up the Iseran, Cormet de Roselend, the Petit Saint-Bernard and Les Arcs.
Not too bad either, huh?
But as I didn’t get a response, I looked for an alternative and found the apartment in Albertville.
Apart from the climbs already mentioned and others done during the 2021 and 2022 editions of my Tour de France, we’ll be closer to an area I’ve previously discussed, but which I’ve never visited, the Haute-Savoie.
You can read more about that in my Tour de France 2022 recon: Dauphiné Part 1, Dauphiné Part 2 and Haute-Savoie…
While it’s still a long time before we depart to Albertville, I will – as usual – be having a lot of fun working out a road book.
And, this Tour de France 2024 will be two weeks, or 15 stages, so if next year’s Critèrium du Dauphiné stages are different from the 2022 ones, I’ll be able to get those into the road book as well.
View of Albertville from Fort Tamié, at the end of the Haute Combe de Savoie and at the beginning of the Tarentaise valley (opposite), in the Savoie.
