La Belle Via: Cycling Aix-les-Bains or Chambery to Valence

La Belle Via is a beautiful bike route that takes you from either Aix-les-Bains or Chambery in the Alps to Valence on the Rhone River.

Distance: 280km
Difficulty: Moderate, but it depends which way you ride. Riding from the Alps to Valence there is an elevation gain of 2181m but it's mostly downhill (as shown below). Going from Valence to the Alps is obviously a different story with the route mostly gaining in elevation. Either way, though, there is a. bit of climbing on this route.

La Belle Via profile

La Belle Via

La Belle Via is a seriously beautiful bike route. It snakes down towards the Rhone Valley from two lakes – choose to start either in Aix-les-Bains, on the shores of Le Bourget-du-Lac, or ride south from the lake at Annecy. Either way, you start the ride surrounded by the French Alps.

The route is a combination of the national véloroute V62 and the V63, plus a little bit of the Via Rhona Rhone River EuroVelo 17 route.

La Belle Via's eastern branch from Annecy (part of V62) loosely follows the Isère River to La Bussiere, where it joins the western branch (part of véloroute V63) as it comes down from Aix-les-Bains. From there, La Belle Via continues to follow the V63 down the Isère Valley through Grenoble and Romans-sur-Isère until it gets to Pont-de-l'Isère, where it meets the Rhone River just north of Valence. From here, La Belle Via shares the Via Rhona bike route as it heads south to Valence.

Once it meets the Via Rhona at Pont-de-l'Isère, you can continue south to Valence to complete La Belle Via (and indeed continue onto Avignon and then to the Canal des Deux Mers Toulouse-Bordeaux route or the Mediterranean EuroVelo route), or you can head north to Lyon and Geneva. 

Roughly half the La Belle Via is on dedicated cycle paths while the other half is on shared roads.

To start a one-way ride, you can take a train to Annecy or Aix-en-Bains from Paris, Lyon or Geneva. See our bike-train page for more general info and here for our Alps train map. Both options are accessible by local TER train, meaning you don't need a special bike train ticket.  

You can use my bespoke service to arrange one-way bike hire if needed.

Download GPX file for Annecy to Valence
Download the GPX file for the Aix-en-Bains to Chambery section
Download GPX file for the Chambery to La Terrasse section

On the blog

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Alpine French School

Velo Voyageur

ChicaVelo French cycling clothes

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