Les Monts d'Or

On a lighter note, today is Feb 29th, leap year! An odd concept if you think about. Anyway, thats not the point of this post. On Tuesday I took the train to Albigny sur Soane (which is only abot 10kms north of Lyon) with the intention of finding the climbing area at Curis au Monts d'Or and walking up to Mont Thou, which over looks Lyon, so I thought I'd get some good photos from up there. I had my IGN map (french version of OS) with me and set off up the hill from the train station. Curis wasn't very far away at all and I reached the climbing area in about 20-30 minutes. My first view of the cliff was from the village town square looking through the trees. Its not a very good picture (bloody traffic cone, didn't even notice it until I saw the picture), but you get the idea of the place.

The access to the cliff is up a small track just after the village, and from there its just off to the right up a little path. Below is the approach up the path.

The area to the right of the cliff had some good looking routes around the 6a+ 6b level. I took a few photos mainly just to remember what it looks like and to plan what to bring when we go climbing there. The first picture is the full hight of the cliff which I think is around 20 metres, so its not that high, but a good introduction to the climbing season! The other two pictures are from underneath, looking up from two different view points.

The next picture is from the left area of the cliff and has a nice little corner route and anoher going up the side of the arrete, can't wait to climb those two!!

Eventually, I managed to stop mentally climbing all those lovely routes and actually did some walking. I descended back into the village and took a small road leading up on to the crete of the Monts d'Or. This eventually gave way to a dirt track, ehich in turn gave way to a small footpath. It was steep going at the start and the path rose up on to the crete really quickly. After going up this steep little, enclosed path bellow, the track levelled off and a great looking mountain bike route.

The path above then opened out onto some fields and continued on up to the summit of Mont Thou. The summit was not what I expected at all, I'm used to a cairn or trig point, not a millitary golf ball surrounded by razor wire and loads of scurity cameras! There were of few big signs declaring that this was a french military area and photography was strictly forbidden. What worse, is the clouds had come over and I wouldn't have wanted to take any pictures even if I could have. I descended down by a small road and on to a nice little footpath which wound its way down and round to Couzon au Monts d'Or where I was getting the train back from. It wouldn't have been that far to walk home really, but once you drop from hills, you have to go through some rough areas and industrial estates. I did manage to take a picture of Mont Thou, from just above Couzon.

You can just make out the golf ball at the top of the hill. The train station at Albigny was really pretty and nicely painted. I didn't bother to take a picture of it, as I was keen to check out the climbing area and thought I'd get a picture of the one at Couzon instead. Oh well, you live and learn.