Mont Ventoux - the monster
- Sep 26, 2025
- 2 min read
There's only one right way to climb the Giant of Provence: start in Bédoin. Anyone who takes the Ventoux seriously will ride the classic Tour de France climb—anything else is irrelevant.
It starts off like a friendly host—friendly, almost harmless. For six kilometers, it lulls you into a false sense of security, then it rips the ground out from under your tires. Suddenly, you're hanging on to climbs that wipe the smile off your face.
And just when you think you're going to die a miserable death here, it gives you hope: 3.5 kilometers from the summit, it appears, bare and rocky, with a gradient that seems surprisingly easy. Almost an invitation. You think: "Okay, now I've got it."
But the Ventoux is a sadist. At the Flamme Rouge, it shows you that it still has reserves. The last kilometer becomes an execution. It tries to shake you off, like an annoying ant it's been meaning to crush for a long time. And you know: it could do it at any moment.
And somewhere in my mind, the shadows of Tour de France legends linger. Pantani, who flew here. Armstrong, who played here. Froome, who staggered here like a boxer in the twelfth round. And Tom Simpson – who died here in 1967, just a few hundred meters from the summit. A memorial reminds us that the Ventoux not only ends careers, but also lives.
The descent? A dance on a knife edge. The straights scream for speed, much more speed than any semblance of common sense would allow. To your right, the abyss, so deep that you can't even tell where it ends—except that it would catch you if you made even the slightest mistake.
You survive at the summit. You survive again on the descent. And at the end, all that remains is dust, sweat—and the feeling that you just escaped a monster.
Comments