Ask most people when to cycle in the Alps and they’ll say summer — July, August, the Tour de France months. They’re not wrong. But they’re missing something; spring, those quiet weeks when the last skiers are packing their boots and the snowploughs are still clearing the high passes, is when the Alps belong entirely to the cyclist.

We’re talking mid-April into May. The ski lifts stop turning somewhere around Easter. The chalets have emptied. And the roads — those extraordinary roads that snake up through pine forests, past tumbling streams swollen with snowmelt, and into the full drama of the high mountains — are almost entirely yours.

Ride out of Samoëns on a clear spring morning and the contrast hits you immediately. The valley floor is warm, genuinely warm, the kind of easy sunshine that has you reaching for sunglasses and stripping off a layer within the first kilometre. Wild flowers are appearing along the road edges. The air smells like nothing in any city, anywhere. And above you, on every side, the peaks are still plastered in snow — the Criou, the Tenneverge, the great white walls of the Grand Massif — brilliant against a sky that has no business being that shade of blue.

The roads are why you’re here, though. The Col de Joux Plane. The Colombière; all open to the top, though the links into the next valley might ell be snowbound through April. The long drag through the Giffre valley. In spring you might pass a single car in twenty minutes of climbing. Just you, the gradient, and the sound of your own breathing. That silence, punctuated only by cowbells from the farms that are slowly coming back to life on the lower slopes, is worth the trip on its own.

The climbing is honest. These are proper Alpine passes — the kind that reveal themselves slowly, each hairpin opening a slightly more extraordinary view than the last. You work for every metre of altitude and the mountains make you feel every one of them. But when you crest a col with snowy fields dropping away on either side and the whole massif laid out ahead of you, le métier brings rewards.

And then the descents. Cold enough that you’ll want a jacket from the pocket, fast enough that you’ll grin all the way to the valley. The roads, freshly cleared and free of the summer’s accumulated gravel and dust, are in some of their best condition of the year.

Back in the village by lunchtime, legs pleasantly wrecked, appetite enormous. The village restaurants are still open, the terraces are catching the afternoon sun, and there are far fewer people competing for a table.

If you’ve ever thought about combining an Alpine cycling trip with a stay in the mountains, spring is the answer you were looking for. The snow is still on the peaks, the roads are empty, the weather is glorious, and the whole place feels like it’s just for you.

That’s because, for a few brilliant weeks, it very nearly is.