Valloire and the Télégraphe: The Galibier's North Side

Required Activities

• Climb the Télégraphe from Saint-Michel-de-Maurienne at 715 m — 12.1 km at a steady 7 per cent, with the fort visible above you from the first bend to show where the road is going — mark the halfway point at the Valmeinier turn-off at 1,358 m, and stop at the viewpoint 100 m below the col for the drop onto Saint-Michel, the A43 and the hamlets on the opposite slope

• Coming up from the north, a few hundred metres below the col, find the abandoned house standing by the roadside: it is the only marker left of the tunnel that used to go through the col, where four Frenchmen were murdered by the German army on 23 August 1944 and which the Germans blew up as they retreated, to cut the Maurienne off from the Galibier

• Walk up to the Fort du Télégraphe just off the col, stand where its guns stood and work out what they commanded: the whole floor of the Maurienne and every approach up it — then find the Batteries-basses lower down, the second half of the same position

• In summer carry on from Valloire up to the Col du Galibier at 2,642 m, where Savoie ends and the Hautes-Alpes begin, and stop at the Granges du Galibier on the way for the stele to Marco Pantani, winner of the 1998 Tour

• Go into Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption at Valloire, 17th-century Savoyard Baroque and reckoned among the most sumptuous churches in Savoie — local tradition has it every parishioner carried building material up with them when they came to mass — then find the sundial attributed to the Piedmontese master Giovanni Francesco Zarbula on a house in the rue des Grandes-Alpes, and its pair at Les Verneys