A brief interlude in Conflans

21/03/2025

After our stay in Les Saisies we had some laundry to do. We left the resort in the mid afternoon following our walk and reversed our journey down the wriggly windy roads back to Albertville where we knew there was a supermarket with a Revolution Laundry machine. Neither of us had the energy to do the laundry that evening though so we found ourselves a park up on the outskirts of Albertville next to the mediaeval village of Conflans.

Conflans

We were too tired to even visit Conflans that evening, so we just parked up in the corner of the car park and vegged out for the rest of the day. The car park had four spaces for vans but cars were parked in some of them so we took our lead from the couple of other vans in the large parking area and just found a spot. It was good and flat and pretty warm so we didn’t need to do much with the van once we’d arrived. The perfect start to a lazy evening.

Parked up at Conflans

The following morning we were up bright and early to the sound of a road sweeper. The driver was going up and down the car park stirring up dust from the many potholes. It seemed a pointless endeavour, creating more mess and waking us up to boot.

We made use of our early start by wandering up to the medieval village. Entering through the archway of the Porte de Savoie and exploring the alleyways of this compact town.

The Porte de Savoie

It was too early for much to be open. The cafe owners were sweeping and laying out chairs and the art shops were closed up. In the gardens the gardeners were starting to plant up the beds and borders with their summer planting. A couple of streets were closed for repairs.

I can imagine it’s a busy little place in the summer but on a sunny morning in March it was just waking up from it’s winter hibernation.

Heading for the Mont Blanc Tunnel

We got our shopping and laundry out of the way and then headed towards the Mont Blanc tunnel. This took us via the ‘Route des Gorges’, a lovely scenic route following the River Arly that was more fun for the passenger than the driver.

This took us past some of the villages we’d seen while skiing Les Saisies. Flumet, Praz-sur-Arly and Notre Dame de Bellecombe were all looking distinctly snow free but the gondolas were still taking people up higher to the pistes we’d been on earlier that week. When we saw the signs for Megève we realised we’d probably driven at least part of this road before in the other direction.

Sat Nav dilemmas

From Megève we saw a warning sign that indicated a 2.5m height limit somewhere ahead. In Bertie we used to have a Garmin sat nav that allowed us to input the height, width and weight of our motorhome and had a pretty good track record of steering us clear of issues (although sometimes taking a very long and circuitous route around them). We haven’t been using it in the new van because the new van comes equipped with a Pioneer head unit that allows us to connect to our phones via bluetooth. So we’ve been using Google Maps along with an alert navigator (that’s me, Becky, in case you’re wondering) to spot any potential issues while we try to decide which of the many specialist apps would be best to buy/subscribe to. The jury is still out.

The 2.5m warning sign flashed past this not-so-alert navigator in the blink of an eye. It gave us a little cause for concern, was there going to be a bridge or underpass. Given that we were pretty sure we’d been this way before we can’t have encountered an issue coming in the other direction.

In the end it was a non-event. We saw no further signs and had no issues traversing St Gevais Les Bains and getting to the Mont Blanc tunnel. We may never unravel this mystery but feel that it must have been indicating a restriction on a subsidiary road.