The sea was angry that day my friends

Prophetic words from George Costanza. In my case, however, it was the sky that was angry. As early as Thursday, the experts were predicting rain for the weekend. I was prepared to endure my first weekend of total rain. I had a ton of work to do, and the Rugby World Cup final between England and Australia was on TV. On Saturday morning, I walked outside to put my meteorological expertise to the test. Massive black thunderheads were moving in from the south and it was windy. It was also warm, which meant that the warm wet Mediterranean air was coming from the south and clashing with the cold northerly air from the Alps. A recipe for rain - a lot of rain. But to the north, there was some clear sky, and I thought if it held out long enough, I could go for a hike. I looked in the trail book and found a “medium” hike in the area of Fontaine de Vaucluse where the sky looked hopeful. So I was faced with a decision – watch the rugby final or go for a hike.


Fontaine de Vaucluse

Following the Sorgue, a tributary of the Rhône, up toward the Vaucluse Plateau and the white-capped Mont Ventoux, one comes to the town of Fontaine de Vaucluse. Fontaine for the spring that made it famous and Vaucluse from the Latin Vallis Clause or “closed valley”, complements of the Romans. Aside from being a stop for seemingly every tourist bus, Fontaine is also known mainly for water and paper. Starting with the first mill in 1522, Fontaine used the force of the Sorgue to become a center for papermaking. Rags were pulped between grinding stones powered by water wheels, pressed, and dried to form a medieval version of paper. The last paper mill closed in 1968.

Fontaine is also rather famous for having hosted the Italian poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) from 1337-1357. While attending mass in Avignon one day, Petrarch caught sight of a woman named Laura. Although they never met, she became the inspiration for a number of poems on Petrarch’s unrequited love and eventually lamenting her death. While there are theories on the identity of Laura, it has never been established, and Petrarch’s love poems became world renowned for their poignancy. They even prompted Giacomo Casanova to visit Fontaine in 1790 to pay homage to the poet.


A fountain in Fontaine with an old paper mill and a 15th century castle built by the Bishops of Cavaillon.

 


Another fountain near the town's church.



The spring at Fotaine to Vaulcluse.

 


Another view of the origin of the Sorgue.

La Source

Tracing the Sorgue upstream for about a mile out of town, one comes to the real reason people visit Fontaine de Vaucluse – la source. At the base of a 700 ft cliff sits a pool of emerald green water from which rushes forth the Sorgue at a rate of 165 billion gallons per year, making it one of the largest springs in the world. At peak flows, the spring captures rain from the Vaucluse Plateau and snow melt from Mont Ventoux as well as other nearby mountains. In summer, the level of the spring can fall low enough to reveal the mouth of a cave at the base of a cliff. As early as 1878, divers have tried to explore the subterranean formations looking for the bottom of the spring. Even Jacques Cousteau gave it a go. An expedition in 1985 used cameras to find the bottom to be over 900 ft before moving off horizontally under the plateau.


It's All Uphill from Here

As I’ve mentioned before, I now own several books with various recommended hikes throughout Provence. One book I hadn’t used yet details a hike from Fontaine up some of the surrounding hills and back down to town again. It was estimated at 4.5 hours and described as “medium” due in part to the 1600 ft elevation change. I was soon to learn that the ranking of “medium” is not consistent from book to book. All of the elevation was at the beginning of the trek resulting in two and a half straight hours of walking uphill. That's like walking up a ramp to the top of the Empire State Building (which is only 1250 ft). To make matters worse, it was through the woods where you can’t see how far you’ve gone or even more annoying, how far you still need to go.

One of the real plusses of hiking, especially in Provence, is that it either allows you to see things that you wouldn’t normally see, like the Fontaine de l’Oule. Hiking is also an activity that can be enjoyed by people regardless of age and ability. It’s a very flexible recreation. I was reminded of this when my parents came to visit. When showing them my place of work, I pointed out that there is a rock climbing club formed by some of the employees of the company, and they practice their art on the Colline St. Jacques. My parents asked if I had looked into it, and I replied with my theory on sports for the oversized. Basically, there are a number of activities in which the portly sportsman does not typically participate. Rock climbing is an excellent example. Others include spelunking, deep-sea diving (two reasons: buoyancy and the rubber suits are not flattering), bungee jumping, kayaking (I exclude sea-kayaking since there is no hole to get stuck in), and anything with the word “extreme” in it. Instead, the hefty confine themselves to milder pursuits such as golf, darts, bowling, and softball (the kind you play with a beer in your hand).

So anyway, I’m trudging up this hill for two hours trying to remember why I wanted to do this over watching rugby. I’m cursing myself and the very fit lady who wrote this stupid hiking book. I have to stop every ten minutes now to rest. I’m sweating profusely in 45 degree weather trying to move my largesse up 1600 feet of mountain. My water is almost gone, and I nearly lost my lunch (both figuratively and literally, I accidentally left my backpack open and my baguette nearly fell out). So after all this, I come across an elderly French couple who are picnicking in a small clearing by the side of the trail. They give me the obligatory bonjour! and ask me how long it is to the summit. I pull out my worthless guide book and tell them that I think it’s 30 min but that I hope it’s only 15. Apparently feeling sorry for the heaving sweaty mass standing before them, they rub salt in the wound by offering me a glass of wine. So not only did they hike up this same mountain with a full picnic lunch including a blanket, but they brought two glass bottles full of wine! I graciously decline and shuffle on my way. Thirty minutes later I finally reach the summit, and what’s the payoff for all that work – a spectacular view of haze.


A small spring along the way called Fontaine de l'Oule.

 

 


The payoff. Pictured but not visible are Gordes, Rousillon, the Luberon, and Mont Ventoux.



Ruins of the plaque wall running alongside the GR6 and GR97.

 


The remains of a guard tower situated along the wall.


Reconstructed wall with marker.

 


The rebuilt wall with ruins of the original wall winding up the hill in the distance.

Le Mur de la Peste

In 1720, a ship from Syria pulled into Marseille laden with silk, cotton, and unfortunately plague. Within days, so many people were dying in Marseille that they had to pile corpses in the streets because they couldn't dig the mass graves fast enough. In two years, the Great Plague of 1720 would kill 50,000 of Marseille’s 90,000 inhabitants. Survivors fled the city in droves horrifying people in the rest of Provence who had already experienced ten epidemics over the last 400 years.

To try to curb the spread of plague northward, lawmakers in Aix-en-Provence initiated a death penalty for anyone in contact with Marseille or its inhabitants. A second initiative was the building of a 20 km wall through the countryside to stop potentially infected citizens from fleeing to the north. Much of le mur de la peste (plague wall) still stands today, albeit in ruins, and it runs alongside the GR6/GR97 for several miles on the hike from Fontaine. Since the wall was of the pierres sèches variety, it now looks like a 3-foot high line of rubble. Towards the end of the ruins, however, the wall has been recreated to its original height and width.

Standing next to the wall, I began to ponder the practicality of it all. Frankly, the whole idea smacks of a bunch of politicians sitting around a conference table and saying “Well, shooting people didn’t seem to work, so let’s build a wall. But to keep costs down, we won’t use any mortar.” The reconstructed portion stands about 5 feet tall and, as I mentioned, was built without any mortar. Now if I’m running for my life from a city in which I’m almost certainly going to die from plague and I have already climbed up this damn mountain, I’m not really sure that this wall would serve much of a deterrent. I mean even if you couldn’t climb over this thing, you could always just remove rocks to go through it. Sure there were guard towers periodically spaced along the wall, but they can’t see everything. Even if they did, muskets had terrible accuracy from long distance. Think about it, the Romans built a wall out of dirt across England and much of it is still there. And then there’s the Chinese. If you consider this plague wall and the Maginot line, the French don’t exactly have a great track record of creating barriers.


Chapelle Saint-Gabriel

To offset my epic journey around Fontaine de Vaucluse on Saturday, I decided to take it easy on Sunday. My feet were killing me and it looked like it was going to rain, so I chose a short “easy” hike from the book not too far from home around the Chapelle Saint-Gabriel. Essentially, you can see the chapel from the road without getting out of the car, but I gave it a go and walked for 2 hours around a circuit that began and ended at the chapel.

The chapel is all that remains of the Gallo-Roman town of Ernaginum. The site was used as a port to launch boats into the surrounding marshes created by the Rhône. Once the course of the river changed and the marshes dried up, so did Ernaginum. The chapel has some interesting features including the guano-covered lamb over the door and the ornate carved-stone frame that once held the chapel window. The rest of the walk had some decent views of the Tarascon plain, but was otherwise unremarkable.

By the way, England edged Australia in double-overtime to win their first rugby world championship. Some are claiming it was the greatest final ever played, if not the greatest Rugby World Cup game ever.


The Chapelle Saint-Gabriel near St. Rémy de Provence.

 


Close-up of the chapel façade.

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