Between Mountain Lakes, Marmots and Mont Blanc: Exploring Savoie & Haute-Savoie with Kids
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We’ll go right ahead and assume the French Alps were as far off your holiday radar as they were off ours before this trip. Sure, everyone knows Mont Blanc and Lake Geneva. But that here, between Italy and Switzerland, you can have fondue at a mountain hut for lunch, watch cows grazing whose milk will later become Beaufort, and find so much to discover among turquoise mountain lakes, old stone villages and no end of mountain stories, took us rather by surprise.
We came away from this trip through the French Alps with a great deal: from a log cabin with a dry toilet to kayaking on a mountain lake, marmots in the national park and a via ferrata. At the end we went high one more time, with a hike at Mont Blanc and a detour afterwards to one of the loveliest natural swimming lakes in the region.
And it’s all remarkably close together: there are just around 230 kilometres of driving between the individual stops. That’s exactly what makes this region so appealing to us. No sooner have you got used to one landscape than it looks completely different around the next bend.
Here are our favourite places in the French Alps, with all the tips and details to read up on.
Camping Le Chenantier: a log cabin on the edge of the national park
Our first temporary home stood at 1,250 metres in Val Cenis in Savoie. A place for anyone who wants to sleep in the middle of nature rather than just look at it. We stayed in a hand-built log cabin with a dry toilet and woollen bedding. Ecolodges is what Florent, who runs the campsite, calls this kind of holiday.
And it really is back to basics here: a wood stove, a simple cabin, a dry toilet and a great deal of nature outside the door. Florent built the cabins himself, by the way. Because every log lies differently, no two are alike.
Staying here means booking half board with it. In the evening all the guests sit at one laid table, with the fire crackling in the middle on the colder nights. What comes to the table is homemade and local: polenta, sausages, salad and always a dessert, for which you’d do well to save a little room. The food is hearty and filling, but in a way that the kids happily tuck into as well.
There’s room for every campervan here too, of course. If you’d like fresh rolls in the morning, there’s a bread service that brings warm pain au chocolat straight from the village bakery.
Everything about this site is in our camping post.
Above the tree line: marmots and a whistle code
The next morning we headed up to the Bellecombe car park in the Vanoise National Park, only a few minutes’ drive from Camping Le Chenantier.
We didn’t come away with a usable marmot photo, but we did learn a fair bit about life above the tree line. The animals are wonderfully easy to watch up here, the marmots above all, with their own whistle code: one whistle means danger from the air, two whistles danger on the ground.
After a stop at one of the small mountain lakes, we had lunch at the Bellecombe mountain inn. The kitchen here still cooks to grandmother’s recipes over a wood fire. Alpine life goes on all around, and anyone who’d like more of that mountain idyll than just a lunch can even stay the night. The family who run it are the third generation to do so.
More about the national park, the walking routes and the mountain inn is in our post on the Vanoise National Park with children.
Aussois: through an embrasure into the fortress
The next day was meant to be about culture. Nice and calm and unhurried, or so we thought. What it turned into was one of the highlights of the whole trip: a spy game across five forts where not a single shot was ever fired, and a via ferrata that begins right through an embrasure in the fortress wall.
Jonathan from the mountain guides’ office took us round. With a calm that passed straight to the children, we went into the world of the fortress and then out onto the rock face.
Everything about it, including the age recommendations for each route, is in our post on the via ferrata at the Forts de l’Esseillon.
Lac du Mont-Cenis and Bonneval-sur-Arc: the pass
Two quieter days took us further up the valley. At the Lac du Mont-Cenis we paddled at 2,000 metres, wandered through an alpine garden and then sat at the Gîte le Toët for so long that lunch turned into most of the afternoon.
Days like that are part of a good road trip for us: not always onwards, onwards, onwards, but sometimes just staying put, looking around and letting the mountain in front of you simply be a mountain.
In Bonneval-sur-Arc, it was the quiet that took us by surprise. A village of rough stone and lauze roofs where not a single cable hangs above the lanes and which is the only village in Savoie to belong to the association of the most beautiful villages in France.
A waterfall like something out of the jungle
On the way from Savoie into the Haute-Savoie we made a stop that we’d planned fairly casually. At the Grotte et Cascade de Seythenex you can hear the water crashing into the depths from the car park, long before you see it.
Then it gets rather spectacular: a cave, the only publicly accessible one in the Haute-Savoie, a 40-metre waterfall to climb up and back down, and two ziplines right in the middle of it.
So the little stop along the way turned into one of the things our children remembered longest. Sometimes it’s the places you slot in almost as an afterthought that stay with you most.
Champ Tillet, Doussard and the wooden cabins of Marlens
We looked in briefly at Champ Tillet, a family business that has been in the same hands for more than forty years. We stayed longer at the Lac d’Annecy itself, at the Plage de Doussard.
It’s one of the few beaches on the lake that isn’t wedged between the shore road and a promenade. A nature reserve with wooden walkways begins right next door, and the Family Park is close by, along with the wooden cabins of the Festival des Cabanes.
The cabins are built afresh every year by international architecture teams and turn a walk by the lake into a small architecture tour along the way.
La Colombière: comfort outside Geneva
Our third and final temporary home was in Neydens, holder of the EU Ecolabel, Clef Verte, Qualité Tourisme and Accueil Vélo. With it came a mobile home with two bathrooms, and so a good deal more comfort than at the start of our trip.
Honestly, this was the place that won us over least. Which says nothing about the quality of the site: if you’re travelling with children and want a pool, comfort and well-equipped surroundings along the way, this is exactly that.
All three campsites are covered in detail in our camping post.
Le Salève: a giant, Frankenstein and five minutes by cable car
From there, the Salève was only a stone’s throw away. Geneva’s local mountain actually sits in France.
Down below we were still in traffic on the edge of the city, and four minutes later the whole of Lake Geneva lay beneath us. At the top, a nature playground was waiting that had opened only a few weeks before our visit.
A rather lovely shift for a single morning: city traffic below, mountain air above.
Bernex: a complete family day
The most balanced day of the whole trip was Bernex above Lake Geneva.
In the morning we were still pushing a pram along a wide, flat mountain path, and by the afternoon the older child was sitting in a rubber ring and hurtling down that same slope at full tilt. All of it at exactly the base station we’d set off from that morning.
A day that shows rather well why we love family travel in the mountains: everyone can find their own pace, and in the end you all meet up in the same place anyway.
The finale: as close to a glacier as you’d otherwise only get with an ice axe
Last came the mountain that got talked about most on this trip.
We didn’t take the Tramway du Mont-Blanc all the way to the glacier, but got off one stop earlier and hiked from there with Mont Blanc in view.
At the end came a mountain restaurant with one of the finest views we’ve ever had, and blueberry tartlets made with blueberries from the mountains. There isn’t really a better Mont Blanc finale than that.
If you’d like to see the mountain at full size afterwards, head to the natural swimming lake in Combloux, where Mont Blanc is reflected whole in the water.
Before you plan your own route
One base or several? We went with three and made day trips from there, rather than driving to each place separately. That meant unpacking three times instead of ten, but it also meant setting off early for some outings, such as the one to the Vanoise National Park. If you prefer things calmer, two bases work just as well, at the cost of a bit more driving on individual days.
How many days should you allow? Ten days to two weeks feels about right to us for this route, enough to take in both the quiet Savoie and the more tightly packed Haute-Savoie without rushing. With less time, you’re better off picking one of the two regions.
When is the best time to go? We travelled in high summer, with warm days down in the valleys and surprisingly cool temperatures higher up, at the Lac du Mont-Cenis or in the cave at Seythenex, for instance. Late summer is likely to be quieter overall, though by then the first summer activities are already closing, as in Bernex.
On our last evening we tried to agree on one single favourite place and failed spectacularly. The children were all for the summer toboggan run in Bernex, we were for the mountain inn at 2,350 metres in the national park. The only thing we could agree on: we’ll be back. And next time we’ll give the quiet side a little more of our time.
Discover more campsites in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region at www.camping-rhonealpes.com.
We travelled as guests of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Tourisme. Everything we share here we experienced ourselves with our children, and our opinion remains, as always, our own.
