Trail de la Font de Mai

The Trail de la Font de Mai is a 28-kilometre trail race with 1,700 metres of elevation gain, starting from Aubagne, a Provençal town in the Bouches-du-Rhône department nestled at the foot of the Garlaban massif. This event with its substantial elevation gain takes runners through the hills immortalised by Marcel Pagnol — the land of "My Father's Glory" and "My Mother's Castle" — where sun-scorched garrigue, limestone rock bars, and secret valleys compose a landscape of harsh yet luminous beauty.

Aubagne, city of santons and ceramics, is the birthplace of Marcel Pagnol, who was born there in 1895 and spent the enchanted summers of his childhood nearby. The Font de Mai — "May fountain" in Provençal — is a departmental estate located at the entrance to the Garlaban massif, serving as the race's starting base. This restored Provençal farmhouse, surrounded by restanques planted with olive and almond trees, is the gateway to a world of limestone hills that Pagnol described as "an immense landscape of golden stones beneath a sky of blue silk."

The Trail de la Font de Mai course rises quickly into the Garlaban massif, stringing together steep climbs towards the ridges and rock bars that dominate the region. Runners ascend the Garlaban itself, the emblematic summit reaching 714 metres, from where the panorama extends from Cézanne's Sainte-Victoire to the Sainte-Baume massif, from the Marseille calanques to the Étoile chain. The trails pass through the exact settings of Pagnol's novels: the Vallon de Passe-Temps, the Grotte du Plantier, the Barres du Saint-Esprit, the Bastide Neuve — places that readers of Pagnol will recognise with emotion.

With 1,700 metres of elevation gain packed into just 28 kilometres, the Trail de la Font de Mai boasts an impressive elevation ratio that makes it one of the most demanding races in the region. The Garlaban's limestone terrain is formidable: scree of white stones, limestone slabs smoothed by wind and rain, light scrambling passages through rock bars, and rocky descents over lapiaz demand constant attention. Provençal heat, amplified by the glare from white cliffs and the lack of shade on the ridgelines, adds a further physical dimension, particularly during summer editions.

The Garlaban massif is a distillation of Provence at its wildest and most authentic. The garrigue covering the hills is a natural aromatic garden: thyme, rosemary, savory, lavender, and wild fennel perfume the air and crackle underfoot. Bonelli's eagle, one of Europe's most endangered Mediterranean raptors, nests in the massif's cliffs, while the rock partridges — those bartavelles with their distinctive call, made famous by Pagnol — still enliven the garrigue with their cries. To run the Trail de la Font de Mai is to literally run through a book, turning the pages of French literature with feet on the scree and nose in the thyme, carried by the dazzling light that makes the Garlaban one of the most beautiful massifs in Provence.