What a sound advice Richard!!!Doc, so far in this thread there have been assorted suggestions, all spread across a huge area of what is sort of the south east corner of France.
In very simple terms:
a. You have decided on Annecy as your first base, with Castellane as your second.
b. You want somewhere between the two for a stop.
c. There are two classic routes north to south, which are:
1. Route des Grande Alpes
2. Route Napoleon
d. As you can see from these very simplified maps, the two routes do not overlap; they run parallel to each other. One starts in near enough Geneva and passes (with a loop) through Annecy, then heads off through several of the places suggested in this thread, before reaching the Mediterranean at Menton. The other starts south of Annecy in Grenoble and passes through Castellane, before reaching the sea at Cannes. Menton is about 40 miles east of Cannes, with Nice near enough between the two.
e. With these two very simple maps, you should be able to work out where is halfway between all sorts of places and start to plan your holiday accordingly.
f. As you have set aside quite a lot of days to ‘Do the French Alps’ I’d suggest, going down the Route Napoleon, which will tick off two of the popular ‘Must do’ spots, being Annecy and Castellane. Then I’d come back up the Route des Grande Alpes, and tick off a few more.
Almost tempted to do that myself.
With mapped information above, @Doc can simply type in the names of the cities/towns/villages into MRA and have him self a very easy holiday route to enjoy. Do 150-250 miles per day and book hotels between. What not to like?!
