Adieu Ventoux
Three paved roads wind their way to the summit of Mont Ventoux—Bédoin, Malaucène, and Sault. Each is a test of endurance, a path of toil and revelation. To ride one is to ascend to a sacred plane. To ride all three in a day is madness. Those who dare are called Les Cinglés du Ventoux—the Crazies of Ventoux. The name fits. You have to be a little unhinged to look at a mountain like that and think, once isn’t enough.
I spent six months living in its orbit as a cycling guide, waiting for my moment. Dwelling in its shadow. Wherever I went, felt its gaze upon my back. My days became consumed with a kind of private liturgy. If I wasn’t climbing it, I sought traces of it elsewhere. I poured over medieval maps that mark the tiny farmsteads and forgotten dwellings scattered across its flanks. I traced my finger to Jas de Reynard—close to today’s Chalet Reynard, the bustling waypoint on the southern ascent. Following a vein of life that flowed their long before its Tour de France story.
When I first encountered Ventoux in 2022, there was no strategy, no training plan — just raw determination and blissful naivety. Dismissing advice to eat on the way up, my legs solidified into concrete pistons with 4km to go. Each revolution heavier than the last. I clung on—tucking in behind another for shelter, and inched my way towards the white tower at the summit. Something stirred inside of me that day. I knew I would return.
This Spring, wary of the winds and weather, I chose patience, ascending one side at a time, week by week. Each climb a small pilgrimage. Each ride a lesson in humility. In summer, I was thwarted by soaring temperatures where not even an early start could save me. Finally, autumn and my chance arrived. The beech forests burned gold and the mountain exhaled after the frenzy of the Tour. Already by October, the summit temperature threatened to drop below zero. Soon, the mountain would seek its winter slumber, becoming evermore inhospitable. This was my last chance.
From Bédoin
I set out from Bédoin at 9 a.m., the road empty and temperatures hovering around 11°C. With a pain au chocolate still warm tucked in my back pocket, I wound my way upwards past the vineyards and orchards that thrive in the Mediterranean foothills. I fought hard to resist the temptation to give in to the excitement flooding my mind and urging my legs to go faster. The mental game had started, even if the physical had yet to kick off.
I couldn’t help but smile as the road banked hard, and slammed upwards. The infamous Saint-Estève hairpin at 6km brought nothing but relief to me. Because it meant that the early anxious, early kilometres were over. It was time for the forest. The gradient, a merciless 10%, demanded no strategy, no doubts about whether to push more or less, just a steady constant, rhythm. Thoughts of the summit disappeared—out of sight, out of mind. A tunnel of oak, pine and cedar encased me. Between 600 and 1,400m, grass still grows by the roadside and hungry trees reach skyward. Only my ragged breathing broke the silence.
I trundled on, held by its sheltering boughs. Just after 11km, the forest thinned and the white tower emerged. It vanished as quickly as it appeared and I was plunged back into the tunnel, but whatever peace I’d scrounged was rent apart. That fleeting glimpse reminding me of exactly how far I had yet to go.
The relentless 10% gradient started to burn as I crawled my way closer to Chalet Reynard. My pace slowed and I recalled a butterfly landing on my handlebar here in the Spring. It was a welcome distraction; many rare species thrive in Ventoux’s unique biosphere. In Summer, that butterfly was replaced by large, black flies and I bore my task of insect taxi with less enthusiasm.
After Chalet Reynard, the first few kilometres are deceptive—the gradient eases, coaxing a faster cadence, convincing my legs the worst is over. Stripped bare by the Mistral and the hands of medieval shipbuilders, I was at the mercy of the mountain. Ahead, the white tower appears and disappears, each switchback a teasing mirage. My legs are doing all they can, and now it’s my mind that must fight. Past the 3-km-to-summit marker, it’s back into the coliseum of suffering endured in the forest, now intensified by altitude and exposure. On a good day, the sun is merciful and the wind light. On an ordinary day, the wind slams into you at every bend. In Summer, the sun reflecting off white limestone traps you in a brutal yet beautiful amphitheater. Now in Autumn, my body sweats and shivers at the same time.
I wasted no time at the summit, scarfing down my pain au choc and descending to Malaucène before I could change my mind. Icy gusts snagged at my throat and my fingers, numb already, groped for the brakes.
From Malaucène
For me, the ascent from the wilder northern side is the hardest. Almost the same distance as Bédoin but without the gentle warm-up. Malaucène is straight down to business. As I started to climb again, a whispers rose. “If you take the Col de la Madeleine you’ll be back in Bédoin in 12km. Your knees are aching, you don’t want to injure yourself.” I shoved them away.
I couldn’t find my rhythm as the winding ascent soon hardened into cruelly steep ramps. I understood Malaucene by its colours. Early on, the road was a dusty yellow, painful but not excruciating. The true suffering was reserved for the tar-black pitches, where the km markers mocked me, promising 12% and delivering more, or teasing 11% when I thought the worst was over.
Mont Serein is the north side’s Chalet Reynard, a brief pause before the final assault. Once I’ve finished cursing my cleats, blaming them for my knee pain rather than the relentless elevation gain, I take a deep breath, and push on again.
Almost immediately after Mont Serein the road ramps straight back into a brutal 12% . The courage I had mustered, the thoughts I had gathered, scatter across the mountainside in seconds. A brief return of dense forest cradles my remaining lucidity before the world opens again to the moonscape. The tower sits atop impossibly tall walls of scree, an assault on my will. I fought for every inch of tarmac until finally, I reached the penultimate bend where the globular aviation radar looks like a ship from Star Wars. The sight of it wrenches me from me from my cave of suffering, giving me just me enough to push up out of the saddle and climb the concrete ramp to the summit again.
I didn’t linger at the top. Jacket on, gloves on. A quick photo. Allons-y. The wind had picked up now. It caught me off guard just 700m from the summit at the Col des Tempêtes, where the road dips southward. A gust buffeted my front wheel, shunting me sideways. I gripped tighter, willing the frozen fingers inside my neoprene gloves to respond. In Summer, I descended in a short-sleeve jersey; now I wore every layer I had and still wished for more.
From Sault
I stopped at Chalet Reynard. This was the moment of no return. I wanted to go back to my warm van in Bédoin. So badly. I was dead tired. The kind where lying on the ground seems like a good option. I knew if I descended to Sault, I would climb back up and finish it—no point bailing at the bottom there. Still, the thought crossed my mind and left only after I’d calculated the distance to go around the mountain and through Gorges de la Nesque and assured myself that it was indeed easier to climb back up. With a sigh, I went left at the fork, resigning myself to the 20km climb back up from Sault. All the way down, I prayed the gradients flashing in the corner of my Garmin screen would go easy on me. I refused to pedal, logging my slowest descent ever on that side. In Sault, sitting down felt dangerous; I might never get up again. Instead, I grabbed a pain au chocolat aux amandes and a can of Coke from the boulangerie. I demolished the pastry standing in the street, sucking the last of the buttery flakes from its brown paper bag. I’d passed the point where etiquette might have led me to a bench. I siphoned the Coke into one of my plastic water bottles. I knew I’d need it later. And off I went.
From the village of Sault, the road dips briefly to the valley floor before climbing past lavender fields. In Summer, I descended past the purple rows, my mouth clamped shut and sunglasses snug, hoping to dodge the bees that smacked like small rocks upon impact. After the other two sides, Sault’s 6–8% gradient felt mercifully flat.
I crawled my way up through the forest drifting into hallucination. I thought of the bears that once roamed this mountain—whose bones litter caves on the northern slopes—and the newly re-introduced wolves. My wandering mind knew that if one leapt across my path now, I’d take it as a welcome excuse to climb off and lie down.
By the time I reached Chalet Reynard again, the hallucinations had faded into sharp clarity—6 km to the summit—again. The peace from the forest stayed with me this time because I knew that even if my legs seized, even if I had to walk it, I would make it.
I brought many people up Ventoux this season—some who knew nothing of its reputation and others who arrived on a mission. I witnessed each journey unfold—those who doubted themselves, those who went too hard, too fast, too soon. I watched as they discovered how far they could push themselves, how much suffering they could endure. I climbed the final km with as many of them as I could, dropping back again and again. Even though it was the section that I knew best, the final km felt endless. At 11% my tires clung to the tarmac, dragging me backward. In my head I played the same mantra on repeat —just keep spinning, just keep spinning. Out of the saddle and up the ramp.
The Summit
Reaching flat ground brought relief mixed with the strange sense of disbelief. In the Summer, the summit is crowded—cyclists elbow to elbow, heading for the famous sign. Cries of Allez! Allez! Allez! fill the air. Bodies sprawl on the ground or drape over handlebars sucking in air; bikes are triumphantly hoisted overhead. But this October evening, it’s empty and quiet. The world below has halted, suspended in the shafts of light that pierce the clouds.
I spent Spring, Summer, and Autumn with this mountain. In its quieter moments, my only company at the summit the faraway snow-capped peaks of the Alps and the Mont Blanc Massif. And its busiest ones too, humming with tourists and the fever of the Tour de France. I’ve seen it in every light yet never the same twice. Its moods shifting by the hour. A summit that has greeted me with both tender caress and cruel neglect. In the days and weeks before, I combed through centuries old texts in their original French: Petrarch’s 14th-century description of the “terminal peak,” written as Le Fieux; an 18th-century treatise that renames it Le Filiol. And I wondered about language and memory—if the spring that bubbles just below the summit on the north face, today called Fonfiole, might once have been Font Fiole — a whispered relic of Petrarch’s era. The rabbit hole only deepened. Each name, each fragment of lore was another aperture into Ventoux. I began to see the mountain as a palimpsest, continually rewritten by shepherds, poets, pilgrims and cyclists.
I began to see Ventoux as more than a climb profile. As a living presence, ancient and formidable, that holds a mirror to the souls of all who dare its wind-swept crown. And when you finally descend, legs shattered, face streaked with salt, you leave not victorious but changed— another pilgrim marked by the mountain.
This is the Ventoux I came to know.
