Lavender Field near Sault

Lavender field between Sault and Mont Ventoux

Today Sarah Wimperis and I travelled to Sault in the late afternoon to:

• check out the painting possibilities
• see if the lavender was coming into bloom
• drive over the top of Mont Ventoux

We scored two and a near miss.

Sault offers lots of painting possibilities and looks just the same as when I first visited some 20 years ago with a BBC film crew in tow (see The first time I went painting in Provence).  I christened my new A3 size Moleskine with a marge sketch.


The lavender is in bud but not yet in full bloom in most fields.  We stopped at two belvederes which gave us a great view of the lavender fields which surround this town.  On the way back we found this field which was beginning to bloom properly.  We decided this one was one we had to come back to:

This is a map of the lavender fields of Sault and Ventoux

From there we took the road up Mont Ventoux (height 1912 metres) safe in the knowledge that most sensible French people would be starting their evening meals and not driving on the mountain.  We got most of the way to the top seeing only a couple of cars but the drive was very demanding and I was very glad I was on the mountain side of the road every time I saw the view as we got nearer and nearer to the top.

We didn't quite get to the top but did reach the treeline.  Then we began the decent past all the messages painted on the road for all the riders in the Tour de France: