Neither of us were looking forward to today’s 90km from La Chambre to Le Bourget-du-Lac (just north of Chambéry). It wasn’t a defined bike route, and since it was a river valley, the Michelin map showed a narrow band of red roads, meaning heavy traffic.  However, we immediately followed a smaller road out of La Chambre and stumbled into a very popular bike route with beautiful scenery. It was a bit hillier than following busier roads along the river but we were rewarded with significant shade from trees. 

During a slight climb, we started talking with a local cyclist, Jean-Pierre, who very enthusiastically gave us advice about which roads to take to get to Chambéry. It was mostly following roads we were already planning to take, but he highlighted off-road bike paths which hadn’t yet made it to Google Maps. 

The day ended up being much nicer than anticipated, though the heat caught up to us in Myans. We pulled over to cool down in a beautiful cathedral which (fortunately) had an underground vaulted sanctuary. 

We continued into Chambéry to get our chains cleaned at a local bike shop. They cleaned both of course chains free of charge – yet another touring cyclist benefit – and ran a couple other errands before the final 10km to our destination of Bourget-du-Lac. We selected a campsite at the base of Mont du Chat, the third and final mountain climb for the following day’s Tour de France stage.