Some Historical and Natural
Sights in one Corner of Provence
Part 9: Springs at Fontaine-de-Vaucluse
The description and illustrations of the technical details of this spring come from a little booklet I was handed on location by its author, I presume. It is called "a la Decouverte de la Fontaine de Vaucluse" 2006 Edition with Joseph Boucher. Thank you, Joseph: Merci beaucoup!
As I came into the village of Fontaine-de-Vaucluse I was immediately struck by the sight of its 11th century church and the castle ruin in the background:
As we walk toward the springs, we will see more of this castle, such as this view:
And this view:
But we are getting ahead of our visit to the fountain (spring) and need to go back into town to start our walk:
We notice the river in town and start to follow it up into the canyon from whence it flows:
The photo above shows some diversions that come back into the river in the town, as shown next, from here it is the river 'la Sorgue' and flows to the town of l'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (on the way to Avignon) where it is split into two rivers flowing in two directions.
About halfway up we take a look at the cliffs to our left and right, the water wheel of a working specialty paper mill, and, especially, the river in its setting.
First the cliffs to the north with their openings caused by weathering of the limestone cliffs:
On the other side, another 'holy' cliff, this one with a castle:
The trees along the river are quite spectacular:
The paper mill's wheel keeps turning:
And at the papermill there is a low diversion work in the river to move water toward the mill-wheel:
And the river? It is beautiful with clear water and much healthy greenery growing on its sediments:
OK, but we have not yet reached the source of all this water, the famed springs from which all of this richness derives. So start back up the path and meet Mr. Boucher passing out his book to interested parties. It has this cover:
But is that what we will see when we get to the top? No, according to a graph in the book, the least water comes out of the springs in September, based on 30 years of observations. And it is September. Oh well. At least there is much water in the river, so we will see something flowing out of the ground. For sure.
Note the rocks sticking out of the water in the book cover photo, we will see some of these rocks later, but dry.
So now we arrive at the top and all we see is a hole with standing water, and lots of evidence for flow, but flow into the hole (from the rains that just stopped) and not out. It is the erosion that comes with flow, whether into or out of the cave, that has this nice tree sending out fingers to hang on for dear life! Evidence for recent flow into the cave is on the wet ground behind the tree
The markers show what water levels one could expect in times of OUTflow conditions:
This figure from the book by Boucher shows some of the explorations that have been made into the source-cave, including one by Jacques Cousteau in 1946! It also shows why the mouth of the opening is not easily seen since it comes to the surface at an angle. One has to get behind the current pond, which I did not do. That, plus the debris-flow that no doubt accompanied the flow of rainwater into the cave from the surrounding slopes (one is buttressed for the purpose of reducing such debris flows) has obscured some of the opening, at least from the vantage point I had standing in the entrance.
This is what the water in the hole looked like, with the cave that is the water source extending deeper to the left and below where we are standing now:
Next we see the source of the recent in-flows: one showing the anti-erosion steps being taken, and the next one showing we are, at the source, in a real hole surrounded by cliffs:
That last picture reminded me it was sunset, so I took some sunset photos from out of the hole, and here is one of them
Arriving at the top of the canyon, at the water source, looking back toward the town was nice, with a bit of moisture in the air giving the view a soft quality:
There is plenty of evidence for past flows coming OUT of the hole on the rocks near the source.
Some of these larger rocks are the ones in the book-cover photo shown above to be sticking out of the water flow at its higher stages:
So, there is no flow here, now, but there is flow in the river below. It must be coming out of the ground below us. The book illustrates how this works quite nicely, and shows where the flow is permanent (darker blue) closer to town and where it is intermittent (lighter blue) higher up:
So we walk down looking for exactly where the flow begins, and find this one wet spot, with hardly any flow so it reflects the location of a seep, but it does not begin to explain the flow below.
Finally we come to an honest to goodness spring where water wells up from under a rock, and from here on there is flow in the river:
From that small source, some water flowed downstream, but as it flowed its volume increased, suggesting other springs were contributing:
Looking down from here, we see more and more water, so it must, as the book's figure suggests, be coming out at many locations in the river bed.
On the way up we already looked at several delightful scenes of the river midway between the source and the town. And as we descend further and look at the river closer to town, we realize we are now looking at the contributions from the permanent flow zone having been added to the intermittent flow zone higher up the canyon:
That photo was taken on the way up, of course, because by the time I got back to town it was quite dark. In town I buy something to eat and drink, and then hustle back to the hotel. Tomorrow I go home!
Go back to Nimes and its Arena
Go back to Nimes and its Roman tower
Go back to Nimes and its Fountain Gardens park
Go back to Nimes and its Temple of Diana
Go back to Nimes aqueduct's Pont du Gard
Go back to Avignon's major attractions
Go back to Climbing a mountain near Glanum
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