Detailed review by squidge
squidge
Occitanie, France98%
Its an amazing sense of freedom to be right on the top of a dominating mountain, with a 360° panoramic view over miles and miles of valleys, towns, and forest land. The Pic du Tantajo offers this sensation. From the top of this mountain, you'll see the winding river Orb and afar, the sea, which looks like a mirror reflecting the Mediterranean sunshine. At the end of autumn, dried leaves are burnt forming chimneys of smoke here and there, which rise up into the clear deep blue sky, almost as though they were communicating through smoke signals. The vineyards trace their neatly aligned branches, wound around their wire supports, giving green and brown striped parcels of land in the summer, and an array of colours in the autumn months. Orange, red, purple or yellow, each variety boasts its fruity tone.
The distant misty mountains blend with the sky whilst the thick forests essences evaporate, fusing with the heat waves which warp the landscape. The steep and narrow road which leads to the top of the Pic du Tantajo is rarely used, apart from technicians who verify the antenna installations. The main road from Bédarieux, at the foot of the mountain, to Béziers, passes through a tunnel, under the Pic. Behind the antennas, which are surrounded by high fences, the highest point of the rock is mounted by an orientation table which consists of a sculpted black marble slab lying on a concrete stand. You can read the major directions and distances, as far as Paris or Bordeaux (which of course, can not be seen from here, even on a clear day!). More visually realist, you can make out the Pyrenees chain to the south, the coast and the sea east as far as Montpellier, west you can see l'Espinouse behind the Caroux, and to the north, the vast Cevennes mountains to the Massif Central. If you stand on the edge of the rock, in front of the orientation table, and look down, your instinct will make you take a step backwards, as the rock you are standing on leans over an impressively empty drop.
The legend goes that in ancient times, a creature, named the Bédarasque lived here. It had a witches head, a bats body and a snakes tail, and it couldnt stand the sound of laughter or any other sort of audible joy, which would escape from Bédarieux town below. The unlucky children who were caught laughing, would be kidnapped by the Bédarasque, and locked up in a cave, deep inside the Tantajo. The inhabitants of Bédarieux would do all they could to stop the children from being kidnapped, and so, they were forbidden to laugh or play.
One day, a boy and his family moved to Bédarieux from another village. When the boy played his flute, his neighbours panicked, and told him to stop. But the boy had a clever plan, and with his family and neighbours, they put it into action. He hid a snake in a bag, and put it in his pocket, then played his flute, until the Bédarasque flew down from the Tantajo, sweeping him away to its den.
While the Bédarasque slept that night, the boy sowed its bat wings together, and released the snake to bite it. The creature tried to fly away, but fell heavily to the bottom of the Tantajo, where the children from the town threw stones at it, until it died, leaving the heaps of stones, still visible, at the foot of the Pic du Tantajo.
So if you're passing under the Pic du Tantajo, why not take the small road at the end of the tunnel and follow it up to the antennas, just to take a deep breath of fresh forest air, and see how tiny everything seems below, in this vast and magnificent landscape.
Pic du Tantajo10
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