Chalet Magique Le Bourg-d'Oisans
Three hundred metres from the foot of Alpe d'Huez.
Three hundred metres from the foot of the most famous climb in cycling. Five bedrooms, sleeps ten, self-catered.
You can see the mountain from the garden. You're climbing it a minute after you leave.
This is our house in Le Bourg-d'Oisans, freshly refurbished, and this is the first year we're letting it. A big, comfortable family house set back off the road, with a locked garage and secure parking, a pool, a hot tub and a barbecue on the lawn, and a drive that comes out three hundred metres below the first ramp of Alpe d'Huez. We're English and French speaking, we live five minutes away, and we'd rather be asked than not.
- Three hundred metres. Out of the drive and you're on the first ramp inside a minute. You are not near the climb. You are on it.
- Secure parking and a locked garage. Bikes indoors, dry and out of sight, with their own door into the house. Cars and vans on the drive and under the carport.
- Five bedrooms, just refurbished. Sleeping ten across two floors. Book direct and the beds are made, linen and towels included.
- Pool, hot tub, barbecue. Eat outside for twelve, get in the hot tub, get in the pool, with mountains in front of you the whole time.
Nine climbs. Nothing needs a car.
Bourg-d'Oisans sits in a flat bowl with roads running out of it in every direction, and up. Alpe d'Huez (13.8 km, 8.1%, 1,120 m of ascent, 21 hairpins) starts three hundred metres from the drive. Also from the door or close to it: the Col d'Ornon, Villard-Notre-Dame, the Col du Glandon, the Col de la Croix de Fer, Les Deux Alpes, the Col du Sabot, the Col du Lautaret and the Col du Galibier.
Bikes indoors. Cars behind the gate.
A proper garage, not a shed: concrete floor, strip lights, a wide timber door onto the drive and an internal door straight into the house, so bikes never come through the living room. Outside there's a brush and water for the mud, secure parking on the drive and a covered carport for the cars and vans.
Cold water, hot water, and a lawn to relax on.
An above-ground pool on the lawn for the summer season, a hot tub on the terrace next to the long table, and a barbecue where most evenings end up. Twelve at the table outside and twelve again around the table inside. Set back off the road behind a tall hedge, with no through traffic and no resort noise.
Five bedrooms, one very large living room.
Two floors plus the garage, all freshly refurbished. The ground floor is one large open-plan living and dining room with doors onto the terrace, a just-refurbished kitchen built for a group cooking together, a ground-floor twin bedroom and a separate WC. Upstairs are four more bedrooms, two twins and two doubles, the family bathroom and a separate WC on the landing. Ten in total. Tell us how your group splits and we'll set the beds up before you arrive.
The location is why people book again.
The house sits on the lower Alpe d'Huez road just north of the centre of Le Bourg-d'Oisans, off the road but already on the mountain. The first ramp of Alpe d'Huez is 300 m away, the T76 bus stop 120 m, the Intermarché 900 m, and the town centre, the Saturday market, the bike shops and the restaurants all about 1.2 km. Grenoble Alpes Isère airport is about 1h 10, Lyon Saint-Exupéry about 2h, Geneva about 2h 30.
Le Bourg-d'Oisans, the town at the bottom of the mountain
Bourg-d'Oisans is a working alpine town rather than a resort, and that is exactly why it works as a base. It sits at around 720 metres on the flat floor of the Romanche valley, so the bakeries, the pharmacy, the supermarket and the tourist office are open when you actually need them, and the market fills the centre every Saturday morning. The municipal pool is outdoors and open through the summer: a 25 metre pool, a paddling pool, a slide and a snack bar. There is a mineral and alpine wildlife museum in town as well.
Alpe d'Huez climbs out of one side of the valley and Les Deux Alpes, a little over twenty kilometres away by road, out of the other. When nobody fancies riding or driving, the T76 bus runs all year up to Alpe d'Huez in about forty minutes. On days off the bike, the Vénéon and the Romanche are two of the better whitewater rivers in France, running grade one to grade five, and the rafting base up the Vénéon valley is about twenty minutes from the door. The Lac du Verney has a watersports base for paddleboards, pedalos and windsurfing, and the whole valley is the front door of the Écrins national park.
The summer calendar is the reason to book early: La Marmotte Granfondo Alpes starts in Bourg-d'Oisans and finishes at the top of Alpe d'Huez, and the Alpe d'Huez Triathlon takes over the same roads later in the season.
Tell us your dates. We'll answer today.
It's our first season, so we'd rather talk to you than hide behind a booking engine. Message us on
WhatsApp on +44 7904 455422 (English) or
+33 6 38 40 06 95 (français), or email
alex@skilledmapping.com.
The house is also listed on Airbnb.
Our other property: Chalet Magique, a catered four-bedroom chalet in the middle of Alpe d'Huez, open all winter.
This page is interactive: with JavaScript on you also get a pace calculator that works out your time up every climb, switchable floor plans, a map and a French version.