The plan is to spend July/August/September on the road with the family (2 under 3) and in trying to find some ideal locations. The two primary sports are mountain biking and climbing/bouldering.

Unfortunately the availability of data is a bit poor so my initial algorithmic solution isn’t doing very well.

My plan was to get a list of all crags in the mountains (France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria) then append some location info (like altitude, historical weather for August, etc). From there I planned to add a list of campsites as an overlay with wild camping as a bonus. Then I wanted to add all bike parks or cycling locations. That would have given me a simple solution to be able to say “we should go here because there are 3000 problems under 7a and 100x3star ones above 7a. Plus avg rainfall is low and daytime temps are comfortable but not too cool. Additionally it’s within a 30 min drive of 3 world class bike parks and 800km of singletrack.

Why the above isn’t possible I don’t know, its 2018 ffs! So now I’m back to asking friends and Googling around various language websites  I’m sure lots of people here know of some brilliant spots so I’m all ears. In the end, I might even compile a database if I get enough info or decide to spend even longer over there!

It’s worth mentioning that we’ve done a lot of the French side already (but not all!). Quite keen to explore some lesser known areas…

Many thanks!

My plan was to get a list of all crags in the mountains (France, Switzerland, Italy, Austria)

You’re joking, right? Do you know how long a list this is before you even get to all the other variables you note??

Look on UKC – most of the popular crags are on there.

In France the data available is enormous. Just type VTT, cyclotourisme or escalade followed by the department number into Quant. Or just type FFME for climbing

There are lots of climate sites on the Net to type your destination into

Lesser known areas are likely to be harder to get to, less well documented and unlikely to be world class because if they were people would know about them and they’d be tourist traps.

Don’t be a 3 star ticker, go away and enjoy what you find rather than doing all the have-to-do stuff all the other have to doers are on.

I posted some links but they all ****ed the forum so just use Quant/Google

Camp2Camp is quite an extensive database with filters…

Same unclesomebody as on ukb? Might be better to ask over there.

But as we’re here… With two children under three it might be better to prioitise a bit differently. You’re essentially looking for nice campsites that’ll be a good place to hang out with small children with nearby biking (the closer the better, as I guess it’ll be shorter trips per parent) and nearby crags or boulder areas that are comfortable to be at with small children (can be a bit further away as it’ll be all-family trips).

Somewhere around Grand Bornand/Clusaz might work – the valley campsites can be a bit noisy (right next to the valley roads) but you’re not far from La Clusaz (I think there’s a bike park there) and there’s a few XC loops around the valley. Not that far from Col de Colombiéres crag/boulders (although I haven’t actually climbed there – not much above 7a so might be a bit bumbly for you).

Serre Chevalier? Nearby bike park, day trip to all the Briançon/Argentiere/Ailfroide crags and road/xc riding up and down the valleys. Nice campsites at Les Vigneaux between Argentiere/Ailefroide with nearby climbing and XC but daytrip to any bike parks.

There’s some nice alpine bouldering potential in Piedmont (around Cuneo, http://www.cuneoclimbing.it/boulder ) as well, but I don’t know the riding at all. A cursory google found this http://www.mtb-piemonte.it/index.php?lang=GB

(should mention that I know France a lot better than Italy/Switzerland/anywhere else, thus the bias to the alps)