Le Mont Ventoux -a Miocene island
with a protected biosphere.
25 million years ago a shallow sea stretched into what is now the Rhone valley. This Miocene sea was to occupy the region for 20 million years. On its bed were to be deposited sediments which play an important role in today's countryside.
Le Mont Ventoux, the Luberon ridge and the Monts de Vaucluse were at that time islands protruding from the Rhone sea.
The summit of Ventoux, at 1912 m commands one of the broadest panoramic views in Europe.
The name Ventoux seems to go back to the 1st. or 2nd. centuries, and probably had its origin in Vintur, the name of a mountain divinity. In the Celtic tongue Ven-Top means a snow-capped summit.
Over the Sault country, the Comtat Venaissin and Provence reigns "Mont Ventoux", our pagan god, unrivalled, supreme. The whole of the South can see it, and it looks different from each angle. Long before the Vierge de la Garde of Marseilles, the kindly Mother of Safe Voyages, sailors at sea looked at Ventoux. Still today aircraft pilots look for it, and find it at the crossroads of Mediterranean air-routes. Seen from the Camargue it is a Fuji-Yama of lapis lazuli in fair weather, but of aqua marine when rough weather is brewing.
From Avignon it is a blue giant looming increasingly on the horizon then blocking the road. From Carpentras, Bedoin and Sault, when it seems within touching distance, it plays hide-and-seek, changes its shape at every foothill, at the tiniest wood of truffle-oaks or pine-trees, peeps out through some gap or other, then reveals its entire summit as a peak or broad plateau.
The ways in which each day, each hour, each season transform the vegetation, the light, the sky and its clouds, make of Ventoux a god of many shapes. Decked in a coat of green fronds, of rust-coloured fleece, or of snow, embroidered with a delicate filigree of trees that are stripped in the winter's cold or scorched by summer sun, and torn by the howling wind, it is always a handsome and noble sight.
Frédéric MISTRAL saw it as an old shepherd, master of a flock of beeches and wild pines, with his hoary head reaching to the stars, and looking with a calm eye on his flock, while himself riven by thunderbolts or drenched in light.
When you reach the summit what pleasure there is, what a reward you get up there, what astonishing discoveries ! The whole of the great Provincia Romana of old lies there at your feet, confined by its natural boundaries. The Mediterranean, the Rhone and the Alps form a circular horizon whose famed centre is the peak of Ventoux.
Viewed as if from the air, this vast scene is a tapestry of subtle shades, from sunshine to shadow, a broad pattern of forests, rocks, mountain ranges, ridges, towns, villages, rivers and light-reflecting water..
Ventoux country !
A countryside of innumerable facets, with market gardens on its rich plain, mountain-dwellers, wood-cutters, lavender-growers, hunters, truffle-gatherers, and vine-growers on its wooded slopes ; shepherds among the herb-filled stones ; painters ot these magical parts ; poets like Mistral or Aubanel, among others ; botanists, searching out plants and insects like Jean Henri Fabre; devout mystics like Petrarch of old, and since, many old-time pagan pilgrims, monks of all religions in search of all kinds of beauty ; the curious, and tourists. These constitute the faithful, fervent subjects with their many-sided love of Ventoux and its multiplicity of features.
Each town, each village in the Comté de SAULT and in the Comtat Venaissin, between them make up a country unique in its diversity, depending on Ventoux for their light, using and venerating it each in their own original fashion.
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Mont Ventoux, a protected Biosphere
In 1990 the title MAB ("Man and Biosphere") was granted to le Mont Ventoux by UNESCO in recognition of the mountain's natural and cultural riches, and for their protection..
Six sites make up the central zone of this Protected Biosphere : Le Mont Ventoux (963 hectares) - Le Mont Serein (409 ha) - La Hêtraie (98 ha) - La Cèdraie de Bedoin (58 ha) - La Tête des Mines (81 ha) - The Nesque Gorges (517 ha).
The S.M.A.E.M.V, 830 Avenue du Mont Ventoux, 84200 CARPENTRAS, is responsible for putting the programme of the Protected Biosphere into action.
Flora :
Le Mont Ventoux has more than 400 species of flower, more than 1000 plant varieties, spread over five levels of vegetation between 400 and 1900 metres above sea level. The main wild flowers to be observed by the wayside, according to season, are : Greenland poppies, twin-leaved saxifrages, houseleeks, spring gentianes, Turk's-cap lilies, pale Orchis, purple Orchis, Alpine linciaires, Alpine white thistle, to mention only the best known. They may not be picked, but must be protected.
Fauna :
More than 120 species of bird nest on Ventoux, which is also home to, and a breeding-ground for, a great diversity of larger mammiferous animals. Among these you may see on your walks through the woods or by the roadside are : wild boar, foxes, Corsican moufflon, deer, chamois, roedeer and hares.
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Mont
Ventoux
