The French lake district

Why head to the Mediterranean this season when France"s three great Alpine lakes have uncrowded beaches, sparkling fresh water and great cuisine? Lee Marshall takes the plunge.



The blue waters of Lac d"Annecy and the peaks of Les Dents de Lanfon beyond

You are probably familiar with the routine of France"s Mediterranean resorts in July and August. There are traffic jams on all the approach roads. The fees for sun-loungers, packed together as tightly as the cars in the equally expensive car parks, are astronomical. Mile after mile of coast-road restaurants serve grills of seafood fresh from the freezer, and vendors tramp up and down the beach hard-selling tourist tat. And then there"s the news, after you have travelled all that way, that this is a particularly bad year for sea urchins/jellyfish/seaweed/sewage.

So here"s the French mountain lake scenario. You drive along the shore to a spot that looks attractive, park the car a few minutes" walk away (yes, even in high season) and then jump in to some of the freshest, cleanest water you"re likely to find. If you want facilities - lifeguards, a cordoned-off "petit bain" swimming area for kids, bars offering snacks - you go to one of the plages municipales that charge all of €2 a day (less for children). Parking is generally free. In the evening you can drive, walk, jog, cycle, row, sail, take a ferry, water-ski or roller-blade to excellent, unspoilt, restaurants, some of them surprisingly affordable. If you"re looking for something a little more rustic, you can be in a mountain chalet in less than half an hour, eating raclette or Savoyard ham to the sound of cowbells.

Talloires and its quayside on Lac d"Annecy, viewed from a hiking trail above the town.

The three lakes

For the French, what the three lakes of the south-eastern dйpartements of Savoie and Haute-Savoie - Annecy, Bourget and little Aiguebelette - offer is beach holidays, just as Biarritz and Juan-les-Pins do. The nautical-activities brochure put out by Bourget"s tourist office runs to 36 pages, and takes in everything from fishing to kitesurfing. On sunny days, the town of Annecy"s lakeside park is occupied mostly by local sunbathers, some ensconced for the day, others making the most of a lunch break or an afternoon off. As the local tourist-board website so succinctly says of the Saint-Jorioz municipal beach: "You look for the sand? Here you will find it. After some breaststroke, you can dry yourselves." Talk about cutting to the chase.

The three Savoie lakes were formed by glaciers of the last Ice Age. The slow-moving ice, pitted with rocks and stones, acted like a huge grater, and the depressions it scoured - plugged at one end by glacial moraine - were all filled with meltwater when temperatures rose. But other factors have since conspired to give what are three of France"s largest lakes (not counting Lac Lйman, because it is partly in Switzerland) very different characters and atmospheres.

Colours of the French lakes

Locally, they are distinguished by colour: Lac de Bourget is the grey one, Annecy is blue, and little Aiguebelette is green. This is not just tourist-board spin. Aiguebelette really is a startlingly acidic shade of blue-green, thanks to the estimated 93 species of phytoplankton that photosynthesise just below the surface of the water. Annecy is definitely the bluest, and the only one that, from certain angles, resembles a stretch of Mediterranean coastline more than a lake.

Bourget is blue, too, on sunny days; but it"s the hard, metallic blue of steel under an oxyacetylene torch. And in overcast weather this is the most grey and melancholic of the three. "Oh lake!" gushed Romantic poet Alphonse de Lamartine in a celebrated ode to Bourget. "Silent rocks! Caves! Obscure forests!" More notes for a travel article than finished poem, perhaps - but Lamartine"s ejaculations do catch something of Bourget"s stern impenetrability.

Lac d"Annecy

Arriving from the north, Annecy is the first lake you come upon. Its main town, handsome and historic, is also named Annecy. Set on the north shore, it is easily the best regional base for first-time visitors to the area. With its canals and winding medieval streets, lined with Savoyard delis, cafйs and craft shops, the old-town district is touristy in that very laid-back, French way: there"s no hard sell, and there are plenty of locals to leaven the mix. Like the whole of the Savoie region, Annecy belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia (previously the Duchy of Savoy) until 1860, and its Italianate past is still evident in a certain dolce vita charm; the link is also celebrated annually at the beginning of October with a week-long Italian Film Festival.

Annecy exemplifies the beach/mountain contrast that makes the Savoie lakes so fascinating. You can lounge around at the lively town "beach" (actually a grassy lakeside park with plenty of shade beneath spreading plane trees), and less than an hour later be walking in cool Alpine pastures, looking across the lake to the grey-green wall of La Tournette, with Mont Blanc emerging white, imperious and improbably high to its right.

The Semnoz Mountains

You can also do as I did: hire a bike in Annecy, put it on the bus that climbs from the town centre to the highest point of the Semnoz massif, the 1,699-metre Crкt de Chвtillon, and then freewheel back down, occasionally passing a serious cyclist on his or her way up, all sinews, Lycra, and hyperventilation.

In the evening shadow of Semnoz, the pretty but rather functional western shore of the lake is dotted with sailing clubs and plages municipales. It"s the eastern shore, though, that has long been Annecy"s Cфte d"Azur, with its lakeside villas, formal country-house hotels and well-heeled clientele. The centre of this lacustrine scene - its St Tropez, if you like - is Talloires. Of course it doesn"t look anything like St Tropez: this is an elegant, cultured little place, wrapped around a small bay with views across to the castle of Duingt, at a point where Annecy becomes wasp-waisted. But behind Talloires" show of quiet refinement there is a touch of glamour: French actors such as Jean Reno (who co-owns the venerable Abbaye hotel) are regular visiors, and there"s generally a tanned water-skier or two giving the view some middle-distance colour.

Summer haunt of the rich and famous

An ageing, ailing Cйzanne was sent to Talloires for its mountain air in the summer of 1896. He found the resort and the lake too cloyingly picturesque, complaining that it lent itself to "the drawing exercises of young English misses". He managed to fix the problem by painting a mysterious, even menacing lake view - now at the Courtauld Gallery in London - which for art critic Brian Sewell "bears so little resemblance to reality" that he suspects it may have been "freely remembered and reconstructed in the studio". I prefer to think of it as being done, defiantly, on location: I can see grumpy old Cйzanne with his easel set up by the shore, hitting English misses with every jab of the brush.

Only since the early 19th century has Talloires been a summer haunt of the rich and famous. Aix-les-Bains, by far the Lac de Bourget"s largest town, can date its fame as a restorative resort back to Roman times and beyond. But it was the Savoy dynasty that began Aix"s transformation into one of France"s most elegant thermal resorts, at the end of the 18th century. Before long the hot springs, channelled into scalding showers or carried to hotel rooms and villas by processions of servants, were attracting the European elite.

Aix-les-Bains

The British were especially assiduous visitors: Queen Victoria came three times in the 1880s, making the fortune of hotelier Jean-Marie Bernascon, who had begun his career as a Rhфne boatman. He wasn"t the only self-made man in this boom town: modest pharmacologist Jean Faure made a fortune out of the Bonjean Elixir ("highly recommended for all ailments") and spent much of it on an art collection, including a Cйzanne and a brace of Rodins, which can be admired in Aix"s Musйe Faure.

Today, although the thermal waters gush forth as abundantly as ever in the Art Deco building of the Thermes Nationaux, Aix has the air of a resort past its prime. Many of the great 19th-century hotels have been turned into apartments, and the magnificent Casino, with its allegorical mosaics, had been reduced on my visit to organising a Festival of Clairvoyance and Well-being at which mediums and magnйsiteurs with names like Blue Angel waited forlornly for customers. But Aix-les-Bains is not the Lac de Bourget: it"s not even properly on the lake, though the town centre - a mile away from the water - is now connected to its esplanades, bathing establishments and waterside restaurants by a suburban corridor.

Lac du Bourget

To see Bourget as it should be seen, you need to head for the steep, wooded eastern shore, which is a world away from Aix. Above the charmingly unassuming town of Le-Bourget-du- Lac are two of the region"s best restaurants; and the road that climbs on a series of hairpins past neat Savoyard farms walled by woodpiles, and on through forests towards the Mont du Chat, is a must. Park at the bar-restaurant at the top, as I did, and take the footpath that leads in an easy 25 minutes to the belvedere of Molard Noir. You"re right on the western edge of the Alps here. To the west is the Rhфne valley, verdant with vineyards; below is the lake, laid down between rock walls like a watery landing strip; to the east is a vista of peaks, ever-higher and more misty.

In the middle of the western shore stands the Abbey of Hautecombe, traditional burial place of the dukes, princes and kings of Savoy. After monastic decline and the French Revolution had reduced it to a near ruin, it was rebuilt - between 1824 and 1843 - in a flamboyant, faux-medieval style by a talented team of Piedmontese artisans. The result is an odd, fairy-tale fake, commemorating a dynasty in limbo; but it"s an evocative place, and one of the more scenic of the world"s historical cul-de-sacs. Deposed by referendum in 1946, the Savoy family renounced all claims to its throne in 2002.

Lac D’Aiguebelette

Lac d"Aiguebelette is separated from Bourget and the city of Chambйry by the great limestone wall of L"Epine, "the thorn". It is the smallest and the most private of the lakes - literally private, in fact. Managed and run by the five villages that lie on its shore, it is officially owned jointly by French electricity company EDF and the Chambost de Lйpin family, whose unadorned 18th-century chateau dominates Lйpin-le-Lac.

Although the A43 Chambйry-Lyon motorway (which burrows under L"Epine) has brought the green lake within easy reach of city day-trippers, Aiguebelette still feels like a discovery. Of the three Savoie lakes this is the best of all for swimmers, especially en famille: the shores are gently sloping and the temperature of the water can reach a very pleasant 28˚C. The well-regulated beaches and campsites which dot the shore don"t dispel the air of rural seclusion, which is helped by a ban on motorcraft of any kind (though you can row or pedalo to your heart"s content). As soon as you venture inland from the lakeside villages of Saint-Alban-de-Montbel, Lйpin-le-Lac and Aiguebelette-le-Lac, with their modest summer holiday buzz, you"re immersed in cool and shady chestnut woods.

Pretty little Aiguebelette - with its beaches, its reed-beds and its neat, eco-friendly йspaces poubelles (rubbish collection points) - is about as far as you can get from the stress of a high-season Mediterranean beach holiday.

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