A mighty roar fills the Durance valley, rocks crunch, wooden planks shatter, houses collapse. Clouds of dust obscure the sun. Stunned, the inhabitants of Savines watch their village die. Half a century later, the scene from 1955 flickers across the screen of the "Museoscope du Lac" film museum in black and white. Images of people carrying all their belongings to safety, piling sofas, wardrobes, chests of drawers and radios onto wooden carts. Images of columns of refugees like something out of a war film. But these are images of preparations for the construction of Europe's largest reservoir. Three villages, home to 1,500 people, disappeared into the dammed waters. The houses had been blown up beforehand so that they would not emerge at low tide and evoke nostalgic memories. Then the water comes.
As if through a time gate, you step out of the semi-darkness of the projection room into the bright sunlight. The journey into the past touches everyone who visits the film museum at the southern end of Lac de Serre Ponçon. The modern building sits like a memorial on the mountainside, with the water of the dammed Durance glistening a hundred metres below. An artificial plug of rubble and stone blocks the river's narrow passage between the rock faces to the south,
The dam towers 120 metres high. There is not much left of the former power of the Durance, half of whose water is fed by the glaciers of the Massif des Ecrins.
Today, the lake lies peacefully, nestled between the bare peaks of the Southern Alps. Its jagged shoreline traces the shape of the landscape, as if the lake is trying to embrace the mountains. Surfers dance on the turquoise-blue waves like bright splashes of colour. Above them, tiny villages cling to the rocky outcrops, roads meander wildly back and forth through the erosion-carved slopes. A climbing garden for cyclists who love mountains with brittle charm: The passes do not lead across alpine meadows, but through scree deserts - and their ramps have been a great backdrop for the dramas of the Tour de France for almost a hundred years.
You can find these routes in the PDF download:
1st Tour du Lac
(90 kilometres, 1,790 metres in altitude, maximum gradient of 8 percent)
Savines - le Sauze - Ubaye - St. Vincent-les-Forts - Col St. Jean (1,333 metres) - Selonnet - Espinasses - Barrage de Serre-Ponçon - Col Lebraut (1,110 metres) - Chorges - St. Apollinaire - Savines
2nd Col de Vars
(128 kilometres, 1,900 metres in altitude, maximum gradient 11 percent)
Savines - le Sauze - le Lauzet-Ubaye - Barcelonnette - Jausiers - Col de Vars (2,111 metres) - Vars - Guillestre - Embrun - Savines
3. off to Gap
(99 kilometres, 1,850 metres in altitude, maximum gradient of 10 percent)
Savines - Prunières - Chorges - les Borels - la Bâtie - Col de Manse (1,268 metres) - Gap - Col de la Sentinelle (981 metres) - Valserres - Remollon - Espinasses - Barrage de Serre-Ponçon - Col Lebraut (1,110 metres) - Chorges - Prunières - Savines
4th Cime de la Bonette
(156/122 kilometres, 2,622/2,022 metres in altitude, maximum 16 per cent gradient)
gradient)
Savines - le Sauze - Ubaye - le Lauzet-Ubaye - Barcelonnette - Jausiers - Col de Restefond - Cime de la Bonette (2,802 metres) - return as described above
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