Cycling loop: Tour de la Tournette

Direction: clockwise

Landmarks and connections: Annecy-le-Vieux (common route with Tour du mont Veyrier n°2) ; Thônes (separation with Tour des Glières n°45 then Croix Fry circuit n°46) ; Faverges (junction with the greenway, known as the Promenade cyclable )

Description: Up to the Plaine d'Alex, the route is shared with Tour du Mont Veyrier no. 2. When the two routes separate, take the dedicated cycle path to the left of the RD16 to avoid 4 km of departmental road. A little further on, you'll pass the Musée de la Résistance de Morette and its cemetery (Nécropole Nationale des combats en 1944 du plateau des Glières).

Once you're in Thônes, turn left before the church, then right at the roundabout onto the RD12, which, after an easy climb up the Col du Marais and a beautiful winding descent from Serraval to St-Ferréol, takes you to the plain and the Lake Annecy cycle path.

A word about Thônes, which certainly deserves a break. You'll certainly be surprised by the architectural similarities of its facades and vaulted passageways to Annecy's old town. You should also know that it was in Thônes that Jean-Jacques Rousseau experienced the famous episode of the "cherry idyll" that he recounts in his Confessions: "After dinner [...] we went to finish our dessert with cherries. I'd climb the tree, and throw them bunches, and they'd give me back pits through the branches. On one occasion, Melle Gallay, putting her apron forward and her head back, presented herself so well, and my aim was so accurate, that I knocked a bunch into her bosom, and laughed. I was thinking to myself: aren't my lips cherries! How willingly I'd throw them at them... ".