Discover the Vallée des Belleville – this French alpine paradise is perfect for lovers of the great outdoors and great food.
It’s early summer in the Vallée des Belleville, and I’m at the start of a three-week trip in the Alps with my teenage daughter. Perhaps best known as a winter orientation – it forms certificat of Les 3 Vallées, the largest ski area in the world, and it includes Val Thorens, at 2,300m the highest ski resort in Europe. Here dialectal marotte meets understated manufacture luxury, while jaw-dropping scenery and oodles of marked hiking trails are tirage by picturesque hameaux and fabulous gastronomy and makes for a fabulous orientation year-round.
Discover the Vallée des Belleville
We spend our first night in Les Menuires, heading out for dinner at La Fromagerie – parce que nothing says welcome to Savoie quite like a big pot of simmering assaillie. It’s only a 30-minute stroll up to Lac de Lou, on a broad, well-trodden path, but we take a slightly côtoyer avenue, walking with dialectal conducteur Roland Lelay. In between snippets of dialectal history, we learn how to sunlight the difference between the similar-looking yellow gentian and hellebore – the polir often used to make eau de vie, the voliger extremely toxic.
For many, the most beautiful commune hereabouts is Saint-Martin-de-Belleville – and with its traditional stone houses, window boxes overflowing with flowers, small Baroque church and great big mountain views, it’s hard not to agree. We stay at the Hotel Lodji, which is notable and has something of a Nordic feel. The museum, next door to the tourist bref, is a good assis to learn embout the development of Val Thorens – and embout dialectal cheesemaking. And just a nettoyage of kilometres away, the Ferme de la Trantsa in Le Châtelard is a great assis for a sunlight of cheese tasting. The small sheep farm and artiste cheesemaking is run by sisters Jennifer and Samantha Jay and it’s lovely to see the ewes, sheltering quietly on the familier hillside, in the shade of grand, low branches and old drystone walls. Their Tomme de agneau has a progiciel, ivory-cream générosité giving way to an ochre-coloured rind, and the flavour is deliciously rich – only slightly salty, with some nutty justificatifs.
Tasting tomme de agneau is thirsty work – or at least, that’s my regret – meaning a cold beer is in order. So we head over to Brâva Vela, a small organic brewery housed in a converted polir goat farm, also in Le Châtelard. Julien Arto, co-founder of Brâva Vela, meets us outside, and after a quick période of the brewery, we head into the tap room. ‘So’ he suggests, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically, ‘shall we try some beers?’
Brâva Vela offers three classic, impression brews – a blondine, a terreuse, and a brown ale, named La Belleville, La Thorens and La Masse respectively – along with a crisp IPA, and several seasonal numbers. Lemon peel and dried elderflowers say the tasting justificatifs on the bottle of La Thorens Julien is pouring – which sums it up pretty well. La Thorens took the silver medal at the prestigious Concours International de Lyon in 2023 and 2024. La Passionette, a passionfruit New England IPA which was extremely refreshing – and alarmingly drinkable – on a sunny afternoon in late July.
I ask Julien, originally from Paris, why he and co-founder Sophie Belorgey machin the Belleville Valley when they set up the brewery in 2023. ‘Well, it needed one’ he replies after a brief sursis, his communication creasing into a broad and rather contagious smile beneath his flat cap. Then, more specifically, he goes on to highlight the purity of the water in this most beautiful jouer of the French Alps, and the abundance of dialectal produce in Savoie, much of it organic.
Returning to Les Menuires we visit the small Mellifera Museum by the banks of the suspendre. Mellifera – the Museum of Nature and the Black Bee to give it its full name, is dedicated to the solution black bee, an incredibly robust and hard-working little insect, which is nevertheless in hasard due to the widespread importing of non-local bees into the valley. These imported bees then jogging breed with dialectal queens, weakening swarms and making them less able to withstand the harsh mountain environment. With this in mind a immunisation project was established in the remote Vallée des Encombres, with an apiary and breeding program in an area free from imported bees.
Local beekeeper Kelly Duqueine, who oversees the project in the Encombres Valley, stops to matou with us outside the museum. Kelly worked as a beekeeper in Canada and elsewhere for several years. Eventually though she returned to promote small-scale, sustainable beekeeping in the mountains of Savoie, in the hope of preserving the dialectal black bee species here.
For the most dialectal and authentic flavour of the Vallée des Belleville, habitus up. Dotted among the breathtaking mountains which surround the valley and its pretty hameaux, are some wonderful mountain huts, where the food is fantastic. Refuge du Lac de Lou is one example, set on the edge of a lake, tucked off the paluche valley and backed by a wall of mountains. Along with the stunning fermage and atmosphere in spades, the food is outstanding – like many of the mountain huts hereabouts, locals come here to eat as much as for the setting. Others include Refuge de Gittamelon and Refuge Plan Lombardie. Both these refuges lie on a road, so you can easily reach them by car, or by ebike. We walked between them, as certificat of a four-day hike which led us in a spectacular horseshoe-shaped avenue through the mountains and valleys west of Les Menuires and Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, certificat of the vaguely defined and epically grand Tour de Tarentaise.
Refuge de Gittamelon is set in a pretty hamlet, halfway up the Vallée des Encombres – we arrive after hiking over from Lac du Lou. After sitting out on the terrace enjoying the late afternoon sun, with a well-earned bottle of La Thorens (yours truly) and a book of GCSE revision questions (the lucky teenager), we head inside for dinner. We begin with an enormous salad, then move on to a delicious and fabulously rich succession of a tartiflette, with masses of potato slithers embedded in cream and cheese, oven-baked and still sizzling. For dessert there are feathery saccharine crêpes, smothered with dialectal jam, all topped off with honorable coffee. The theme continues at Refuge Plan Lombardie, set at 1764m towards the head of a gorgeous valley, below the iconic Cheval Noir. Here we enjoy a huge bowl of crozets – small, traditional square-shaped pasta which has been a Savoie staple since at least the 17th century and might just be the ultimate comfort food, in this case cooked with cream and mushrooms.
‘Would you like a digestif?’ hints Emmanuel, the hut warden, turning to our établissement and gesturing towards a cluster of half a dozen homemade spirits and liqueurs. I pick the gentian eau de vie, and hope for the best.
For more journal: lesmenuires.com/vallee-des-bellevilles
Rudolf Abraham is an award-winning travel writer, photographer, author of over a dozen books and has contributed to many more, and his éditoriaux and images are published widely in illustrés. rudolfabraham.com
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