One Day on the Sault Plateau: A Lavender Day Trip in Provence
Last Updated on May 12, 2026 by Charlotte
If you’re dreaming of lavender fields in Provence, you’ll have to add the Sault Plateau to your bucket list. Perched in the shadow of Mont Ventoux, the Sault Plateau is one of Provence’s most important fine lavender-growing regions, at elevations where the air is a few degrees cooler and the tourists are a few thousand fewer.
Fine lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) from the Sault Plateau is prized for perfumery, cosmetics, and aromatherapy, with a softer and more complex fragrance than the hardier lavandin hybrids grown on the lower plateaus. The altitude also means the Sault Plateau blooms later than anywhere else in Provence, which is perfect if you’ve missed the peak lavender bloom elsewhere in Provence.
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Sault Plateau 1-Day Itinerary Overview
This itinerary covers our day trip from the northern Luberon area: the Aroma’Plantes Distillery, lavender fields near Aurel, lunch, and a viewpoint over a patchwork of lavender and sunflower fields. This is best suited for travelers who want a relaxed lavender countryside day rather than a village-by-village tour.
Map of Itinerary
The Sault Plateau was blissfully uncrowded, and we could park immediately, get a table for lunch without a reservation, tour a lavender distillery with the whole place practically all to ourselves, and find lavender fields where the only other visitors were the busy bumble bees.
Aroma’Plantes Distillery
Our first (and my favorite) stop of the day was Aroma’Plantes, a working organic lavender farm and distillery on Route du Mont Ventoux.
This fifth-generation family distillery has grown and distilled aromatic plants on the Sault Plateau since 1978. Today, visitors can tour the working distillery, explore the grounds, and buy organic lavender products made from plants grown right outside the door.
The Distillery Tour
For those who are interested in learning about how lavender oils are made, Aroma’Plantes offers free guided tours of the distillery several times per day in the summer. Travel Buddy and I accidentally joined the French language speaking tour, but because my Travel Buddy is obsessed with engineering and how things are made, we made the most of it.
As we walked through the distillery, we learned that lavender essential oil is made through steam distillation: steam passes through harvested lavender, captures its aromatic compounds, then cools and separates into essential oil and lavender hydrosol. Simple in theory — but in practice, it involves steaming machinery, harvesting equipment, tubes, vessels, and gleaming metal contraptions, all of which made Travel Buddy light up like a child on Christmas morning.
He was utterly captivated, reading every informational panel and examining each piece of equipment with the focused energy of someone ready to quit his job, move to France, and start an organic farm.
We also got a clear explanation of the difference between fine lavender (Lavandula angustifolia), grown at higher elevations like the Sault Plateau and prized for perfumery and aromatherapy, and lavandin, the more common hybrid grown lower down that ends up in your soaps and detergents.
The Lavender Shop
After the tour, we explored the on-site gift shop to pick up souvenirs like essential oils, soaps, lotions, lavender honey, sachets, and more. Before we left, we popped into the bar for a sweet treat and bought lavender ice cream. Out of all the lavender ice cream that we enjoyed in Provence, this one was my favorite.
It had the little lavender flowers mixed into a fresh cream base, and it was not overwhelmingly floral or dish-soapy, it was perfect.
Visiting Information
- Location: Route du Mont Ventoux, 84390 Sault
- Cost: Free to visit
- Hours: Open year-round, 7 days a week. September–May: 10 AM–6 PM. June–August: 10 AM–7 PM. Closed January 1 and December 25.
- Free access includes: plant library, gallery, Lavandoscope, discovery trail, Aromatic’bar, and shop
- Guided tours: Free, available in French and English during visitor season. Tour times vary by season so check current details before visiting.
Lavender Fields Near Aurel
After Aroma’Plantes, continue toward Aurel, a tiny village of around 190 people surrounded by some of the prettiest lavender fields we found all day.
A few of the popular fields we had saved online weren’t planted or blooming during our visit, which is just how lavender goes in Provence. We ended up doing a loose scenic drive until we spotted fields that looked good, and that ended up being half the fun.
On Google Maps, visitors tend to tag fields as “Champs de Lavande,” but you can also just pan around the area to look for bright purple patches on the satellite imagery basemap.
Lunch at Logis Le Relais du Mont Ventoux
We walked into Restaurant Nn at Logis Le Relais du Mont Ventoux, a small roadside restaurant without a reservation and got a table immediately.
The host spoke English, French, and German, and the food was exactly what you want after a morning of wandering in the heat: a tarte flambée, a salad, enormous portions, and coffee that actually revived us. This lunch spot seemed to be really popular with German motorcyclists and cyclists.
One of the guests at the table across from us ordered an affogato, and the ice cream monstrosity that came out had the whole cafe in a titter. This poor man was served what looked like an entire pint of ice cream, with a full pitcher of coffee poured on top! The glass was as big as his head!
Walk the Lavender Trail Near Aurel
After lunch, the Lavender Trail near Aurel offers a leisurely countryside walk through the fields at a slower pace with no hopping in and out of the car, just walking through the rows with the sound of bees and the dry summer scent of lavender and the bucolic beauty of the plateau around you.
We didn’t do the full walk because it was approximately 100°F (37°C) and there is a meaningful difference between “romantic lavender stroll” and “slowly becoming baked herbes de Provence.” But on a cooler day, this would be one of the nicest ways to experience the area.
Belvédère de Saint-Jean
On the drive out, pull over at Belvédère de Saint-Jean for one last wide view over the plateau.
From above, the landscape becomes a patchwork of lavender fields, farmland, country roads, and villages — a completely different perspective from being down in the fields.
Plan Your Visit to the Sault Plateau
Getting There
The Sault Plateau works well as a day trip from most Provence bases. From Avignon, you’re looking at about an hour and fifteen minutes. From the Luberon (Gordes, Apt, Bonnieux), it’s roughly an hour. From Aix-en-Provence or Marseille, plan on closer to an hour and a half to two hours. From Pernes-les-Fontaines or the Ventoux foothills area, you’re practically on the doorstep.
You’ll need a car for this itinerary because the fields, villages, and viewpoints are spread across the plateau, and the best moments often happen when you can pull over spontaneously. Parking was easy everywhere we stopped, including at the distillery and in Aurel. After our horrible experience with parking in Gordes, this alone felt like a gift.
Best Time to Visit the Lavender Fields
The Sault Plateau blooms later than any other lavender region in Provence. While fields in the Luberon and Valensole are typically harvested in mid-to-late July, the high elevation of the Sault Plateau pushes the harvest all the way to mid-August.
That means if you’re arriving in Provence in late July and quietly panicking that you’ve missed peak lavender season everywhere else, there’s a real chance the Sault Plateau still has you covered.
How Much Time to Spend On the Sault Plateau
We spent a solid half a day here, and felt like we’d seen the majority of the highlights. Aside from the distillery tour, our lunch was the most time-consuming activity, taking over two hours to enjoy.
Sault Plateau vs. Valensole vs. the Luberon
Here’s the mean breakdown on what makes each of these areas special, and why you should visit the Sault Plateau too:
- Valensole is vast, with long flat fields stretching to the horizon in every direction, often framed by stone farmhouses and lone trees. It’s genuinely spectacular and purpose-built for wide-open lavender photography. It’s also extremely popular and crowded.
- The Luberon lavender fields are smaller and more scattered, tucked between vineyards, olive groves, and stone hilltop villages. It’s charming and beautiful, but the famous villages like Gordes draw enormous crowds in summer, and those crowds spill into everything.
The Sault Plateau is neither busy nor a tourist trap. The landscape is more intimate and layered than Valensole, the fields rolling across hillsides rather than stretching flat to the horizon. I am a big proponent of dispersed tourism, because I think that we can visit and bring business lesser known regions that are equally as beautiful as the places that go viral on TikTok.
If you’re choosing between regions purely for photography, Valensole might edge it out. But if you want to actually experience lavender country rather than fight through it, the Sault Plateau is hard to beat.
Ready To Plan Your Trip to Provence?
Be sure to check out my review of our lovely stay at the Temps Suspendu B&B, and my 1 Day Luberon Roadtrip Itinerary for your next trip to Provence.
