Lacets de Montvernier

Seventeen hairpins stacked up a cliff face in barely two kilometres, one of the most photographed pieces of road in the Alps.

From the valley floor near Pontamafrey, the little D77B throws itself at a near-vertical wall above the Arc, switching back on itself 17 times in roughly 3.4 kilometres to reach the perched village of Montvernier. The lacets were carved into the rock in the 1930s to link the plateau hamlet to the world below, and the stacked ribbon of tarmac looks almost unreal from the bends above. It became globally famous through the helicopter footage of the 2015 Tour de France, and on a quiet morning it is a hypnotic, low-speed driving puzzle rather than a fast road. It is short, so most people pair it with the longer Col du Chaussy that continues above. The surface is good but the road is narrow with little room to pass. Mind oncoming traffic on the blind hairpins, cyclists who flock here in summer, and the sheer drops with only token barriers.