Kevin Reinhardt

"Devote, I beseech you, one of your hours to reading what I did during one of my days. At first I stood there almost benumbed, overwhelmed by a gale such as I had never felt before and by the unusually open and wide view. I looked around me: clouds were gathering below my feet, and Athos and Olympus grew less incredible, since I saw on a mountain of lesser fame what I had heard and read about them. From there I turned my eyes in the direction of Italy, for which my mind is so fervently yearning."

- Petrarch, on climbing Ventoux, Familiar Letters, 1359

"Jean Bobet, the brother of triple Tour de France champion Louison Bobet, and also an accomplished writer, described the experience of approaching the Ventoux in the heat of July 1955 as ‘a lingering death.’ ‘Nothing is more impressive than a silent peloton. Nobody says a word, nobody laughs. Lifting your head slightly, you can make out the shape, in the distance, of the Ventoux. You can smell the fear of the men going to a lingering death,’ he wrote."

- Jeremy Whittle, Ventoux: Sacrifice and Suffering on the Giant of Provence, 2017