Our Tour de France 2024 base camp is Albertville.
This is my 4th Tour de France in a row and the 6th in total, double the number of Giro d’Italia‘s.
Despite my love for the Italian Alps / Dolomites, another Giro remains a financial challenge.
But, I’m not complaining 🙂
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.
Albertville is as strategically located as Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne.
And other than closer to the – climbs in the – valleys mentioned above, it’s also 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 – see the menu of that Tour.
The Tour de France 2024 will be two weeks, or 15 stages, so the Critèrium du Dauphiné stages I planned for 2022 (1, 2), may get into the road book as well.
Then again, my road books always end up in the shredder…
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.
