Bernos Fountain and Notre-Dame de Benon Church

The car park is located along the Route de la Hille on the left-hand side as you approach Bernos (before the Rue du Champs de Foire on the right).

(S/E) Leave the car park by taking the farm track southwards (with your back to Route de la Hille). This track is closed to vehicles by a barrier and a large boulder.

Immediately turn left onto a path leading towards a wooded area along the banks of the Berle.
Continue along the track, which crosses a small seasonal stream and soon runs alongside the Berle (river), leading to the Fontaine de Bernos (see details in the ‘Nearby or during the hike’ section).

(1) Retrace your steps. Shortly after leaving the wooded area, turn right onto a path that soon joins the Route de la Hille via a small wooden bridge (at present, you need to go round the stump of a large tree felled by the storm).

On reaching Route de la Hille, turn right and follow the road for about two hundred metres. The road crosses the Berle.
At the first junction, turn right onto Route du Bois de la Hille, which soon turns into a forest track.

(2) At the first junction with a path on the right, turn onto it (just before another path on the left).
The track crosses the Berle and continues through the woods towards the south-west, then west. Further on, it crosses the Craste de Labory, a small intermittent stream.
Continue straight on until you reach the Route de Benon, and when you reach the road, turn left towards Benon until you come to a Y-junction with a wayside shrine.

(3) Turn right onto Rue de l’Église. Shortly afterwards, turn right into a small alleyway that serves several houses before rejoining Rue de l’Église further on.

Turn right towards the church and turn into Impasse des Templiers on the right immediately after the church.
At the end of this, turn right into Rue de Benon. Continue straight on until you reach a Y-junction between Rue de Benon and a farm track on the left. Take this farm track on the left.

(4) At the first crossroads, turn right onto a farm track towards Senajou. This track runs alongside an intermittent stream.
At Sénajou, the farm track reaches a junction of roads and tracks: take the Route de Sénajou straight ahead (northbound), which soon crosses the Berle.

(5) When you reach some houses, take a path on the right leading towards a wooded area. Continue straight on through the woods to the village of Bernos.
When you reach the first houses in the village, the path joins a road at a junction with several paths. Turn right onto Route de la Hille.
Continue straight on at the junction with Rue de Bernos. A little further on is the car park marking the end of this walk (S/E).

This hike across varied terrain requires suitable footwear.

This route is unmarked, although some sections may have yellow markings, but there are no particular difficulties in finding your way. It is advisable to follow the directions in the description and on the map, whilst also reading the landscape.

Hike undertaken by the author on 3 February 2014

Bernos

Saint-Laurent-Médoc was founded alongside the Roman road in the heart of a countryside that remains charming to this day.

The name Bernos is thought to derive from ‘Bern’, which some believe means ‘bear’. It is true that at the end of the Palaeolithic era, modern humans known as ‘Homo sapiens’ lived here. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors would settle on the edge of open woodlands around a fire and use flint tools to butcher deer and bears...

The Celtic and Druidic fountain of Bernos is situated near what is known in the Médoc as the fairground (6 hectares of meadows planted with chestnut trees, poplars and oaks). This site is used for numerous festivities that are very popular in the Médoc.
The Bernos Fountain is of Gallic origin. The Gauls worshipped the water deities, and the druids performed their rites in clearings where sunlight penetrated, near iron-rich springs regarded as deities. The spiritual life of the Gauls played an important role in their social group. The druids, dressed in white—a symbol of the purity of light and the immortality of the soul—led gatherings within the forest, which had become a temple.
The Bernos Spring is a site steeped in legends and mysteries.
Its circular shape, its iron-rich waters, the arch marking its entrance which once featured a door, and its setting amidst oak trees. Its legends strongly suggest that Druidic and Celtic rituals took place around this spring, which has never been seen to run dry.

Benon

Benon, in the heart of the Médoc, a small village in bloom from spring onwards, shelters beneath its chestnut trees its Romanesque church built by the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John of Jerusalem in the 12th and 13th centuries.
Notre-Dame de Benon lies on the Way of St James.
The history of Benon Church as we know it today is closely linked to the first Hospitaller commandery established in the Médoc.
Around 1155, the Hospitallers built the commandery, which included a hospital to accommodate pilgrims next to and to the west of the chapel.
The first church on the site was a Romanesque chapel dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, built around the mid-12th century. The rectangular room that now serves as the sacristy has a broken barrel vault and a flat chevet pierced by two windows surmounted by an oculus.
It was later supplemented by another building dedicated to Our Lady, which flanks it to the south.
The walls, built of fine ashlar, are crowned by a cornice with modillions.
The west façade, which is asymmetrical due to the presence of a staircase, features a portal formed of three semicircular arches with moulded voussoirs resting on columns with smooth capitals.
The nave, comprising five unequal bays and vaulted with a broken barrel vault, ends in a flat chevet pierced by a triplet.
The façades feature diamond-point decoration.
Above, a modillion cornice forms the base of an arcade comprising five pointed arches, supported by twin columns flanking a pilaster.
This is itself surmounted by another modillion cornice, above which rises a bell-tower, rebuilt in 1768 to house the bells. The smallest of these was restored in 1994.
This monument is a remarkable example of the architecture of military orders.
Extract from the website