Lac d'Annecy, Lac du Bourget & Chambery Guide, Annecy, France

Beyond the high peaks, the French Alps hide turquoise lakes, a royal abbey, and some of France's finest cheese markets. Here's how to explore the Savoyard lowlands from Annecy to Chambéry.

We drove south out of Chamonix on 15 August 2022 with five days left on our Alps road trip and two lakes to cover: Lac du Bourget first, Lac d'Annecy next, then a half-day in Chambéry before the long haul home. Our kids (then 8 and 13) were three weeks into a high-altitude summer - Aiguille du Midi, paragliding landings in Passy, too many chairlifts - and ready for a different kind of Alps: water instead of rock, markets instead of mountain huts.

What we mapped out as a wind-down turned into one of the denser sections of the trip: a drone flight over the largest natural lake in France; a Gothic abbey on a promontory that reads like a stone ship from 250 metres up; a 1,650-metre hike with the whole of Lac d'Annecy spread out below; and a Chambéry market where the Beaufort alone justifies a detour. This is the loop we actually drove, with the times we clocked and the stops that turned out to matter.

Lac du Bourget runs 18 kilometres north-south and covers 44 km² - the largest natural lake entirely within France, held in a trough between the Chartreuse massif (west) and the Bauges (east). Driving the eastern shore from Aix-les-Bains you're on the D991 for the whole stretch; the western shore (La Chambotte, Hautecombe) requires a ferry or the long way round via the Chat tunnel. It reads quieter than Annecy because there's no flagship old town - Aix-les-Bains is a thermal spa resort, not a historic centre. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).