A group of friends and I are looking to have a weeks biking in the Alp D’Huez area next year. I was just wondering which area is the best to stay in regarding access to the lifts? also any recomendations on some accomadation would be muchly appreciated.

Cheers.

We stayed at the Hotel Beausoleil
http://www.beausoleil-alpedhuez.com/accommodation.asp

for the Mega last year, and it was great. They turned over the basement for bike storage, you can check that the lift is running from your balcony and it’s about 50m on the flat to the DMC. We ended up doing half board, which was great because the restaurant choice is a little limited and you had food to put in your face at 7pm every day!It didn’t have a pool, but your lift pass should give you free access to the open air pool. The bar had free wifi and the place was very clean.

We stayed at the Pic Blanc for the Alpes D’Huez tri, which was more hotelly and at the bottom of the village. Very near the only decent bike shop though, and you could always start with a run down the hill and get the lift back to town from Huez. It’s got a spa and wifi in the rooms.

cheers for the reply…..we’d rather do self catering than hotel to be honest. We’ve rode other areas of The Alps but never D’Huez. Does the lifts run from the valley bottom in Bourg de oisans?

http://www.alpedhueznet.com/alpe-d%27huez/webcams/tour-de-france.html
totally off topic like.

Went to Alpe D’Huez last year and stayed in Belambra Les Bergers which is cheap self-catering accommodation. It was very basic and a bit sparse in terms of cooking equipment, I think we had a microwave/combi oven (impossible to even cook a pizza in!!) and a 4 ring hob and that was about it but we struggled through! I’d go again if I was just going with the lads but don’t think the missus would be happy there haha!

I loved the Alpe D’Huez area for the biking though. I preferred the enduro runs there which were much like the singletrack you find in the UK but just fantastic sections all downhill for about 8km rather than 80m! If you stay in Alpe D’Huez there is one lift up out of the resort which is the main DMC gondola and then from there you can cycle down into Oz en Oisans. I definitely wouldn’t rule out staying in Oz because although there will be less non-biking activities to do, you are more central in terms of the biking area so could go either way up the valley rather than in Alpe D’Huez where your at one end of the area.

One thing to be careful of is the weather, we got stuck over in Vaujany one afternoon when the weather quickly turned after lunchtime and the lifts were shut during a downpour. They reopened it at 4.30pm but only to the mid-station which meant we had a 12km cross country route to do to be able to get back into Alpe D’Huez valley.

If you need any more info give me a shout and I’ll try and help

We went there last summer and camped in the valley in Bourg. There are no lifts up to Huez but there is a free bus that runs (around every hour or so) from Allemont which is about 25 mins cycle down the valley from Bourg. The bus takes you to Oz en Oisans where you can get the lifts up to Alpe d’huez. Bikes are towed in a trailer.

You can get a trail map on line. There is also a lot of well marked pedal assisted biking in the area away from the lifts although the track that goes from the top of the DMC across to Vaujany is xc bliss (no. 11 IIRC)

Les Deux Alpes is a half hour drive away with lots more biking there but more DH oriented.

We stayed in Villard Reculas, which is a flat ish ride to Huez, where you can get a lift up to Alpe d’huez, or simply drive up to AdH (parking by the DMC lift is free)

For the Mega this year we stayed in a self-catering appartment with
http://www.pierreetvacances.com/gb-en

They have a couple of big appartment blocks in AdH. L’Ours Blanc is the nearer to the DMC lift.
They were the cheapest accomodation I could find in AdH itself and they will happily allow you to take bikes up to your room in the lift and store them on your balcony.