Annecy to Le Grand-Bornand

Stage 10 - Tuesday, 17 July - 159 km (99 mi)

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The Stage

The Alps! Finally some real mountains. Four real cols today as a warm up for what's to come. Now we'll see the GC riders and their helpers come to the fore. Today includes a 2 km dirt road to Montée du Plateau des Glières. We finish downhill though; a ten kilometre descent. There's no way Chris Froome is going to surprise everyone again, is there?

Winner: Julian Alaphilippe

Tour Touristique

The Glières Plateau located between the Auges mountains (1800m) and the Frêtes, is in reality a hard to reach valley of meadows and pine forests. Its mean altitude is 1450m and it is bounded by cliffs of Urgonian limestone.

The Glières Plateau was an important site of the French Resistance during the Second World War, its mountainous territory giving rise to a Maquis group of resistance fighters which was organized and led by lieutenant Tom Morel, Compagnon de la Libération. The plateau was chosen in January 1944 to accept British parachute drops of arms to supply the local resistance, then as a base of operations against the German rear to take place at the moment when the awaited landings by the allies would occur. The plateau was cut off, poorly accessible by road (and therefore by the enemy) but identifiable by allied aircraft through its proximity to Lake Annecy. The "battle of Glières" (March 1944) left 121 dead from the maquisards against almost 5000 soldiers from the Wehrmacht and the Vichy milice.

Although the British managed to carry out three parachute drops onto the plateau (of which a large one on the 10 March may have brought some 45 tonnes of weapons), the reinforcements promised by Captain "Cantinier", the Free French envoy, never arrived.

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