Mont Ganelon et la légende du traître

Clairoix

The Mont Ganelon is no more than a table of Lutetian limestone covered with coppice, but it commands the Oise valley, and since the 18th century people have picked up here flint and bronze axes, Gaulish coins, pieces of Tiberius, Nero, Hadrian, Antoninus and Constantine, and in 1750 a gold necklace. An old tradition, reported by Léon Ewig in 1836 and by Caillette de L'Hervilliers in 1860, places here the temple of Esus, where the druids are said to have offered bloody sacrifices on a slab called the Roche Monicart, and the camp that Caesar is said to have set up while marching against the Bellovaci; the name of Camp de César has remained on the maps, at the western tip of the hill. As for the name of Ganelon, legend links it to the traitor of Roncevaux: according to Caillette de L'Hervilliers, Charlemagne had the felon shut in a barrel studded with iron spikes and hurled from the top of the mountain that commands Compiègne, a torment the scholar compares to that of Regulus; a variant, reported by Wikipedia, has the ordeal inflicted on Ganelon's wife, accused of adultery, who came out of the barrel without a scratch, proof of her innocence. The historian of Clairoix Rémi Duvert tempers this: the link with the traitor of the Chanson is not established, a Carolingian family of the Laonnois bore this name, and one is 'not at all sure' that Caesar stayed on the hill. The last grape-harvest proclamation of Clairoix dates from September 1894.

Wikipédia — Mont Ganelon ↗

Getting there : One climbs on foot from Clairoix, Bienville, Coudun or Longueil-Annel by the country lanes; access by car is forbidden except with authorisation. The plateau offers viewpoints towards Compiègne and towards Thourotte, an avenue of chestnut trees on the edge of Annel, a calcareous clearing with orchids and the ruins of a 19th-century windmill. The menhir known as 'le Pierrot' is in the territory of Clairoix. Dry ground in summer, muddy in winter; allow two hours for the circuit of the hill (to be checked).

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound