Plage de la Dune du Pilat

The Dune du Pilat stands at the mouth of the Arcachon basin, south-west of Bordeaux, and the beach runs along its seaward foot for about three kilometres. The dune is the landmark and the beach is its edge — an inversion of the usual arrangement, and the reason people come.

Its scale is the point. The dune is around a hundred metres high, three kilometres long and half a kilometre wide, containing tens of millions of cubic metres of sand. It is also mobile: it advances inland by a metre or more a year, has buried road and forest in living memory, and its official height is remeasured because it changes. The pine forest behind it is visibly losing ground.

The beach itself is the Atlantic coast of Aquitaine — straight, wide, quartz sand, with unmediated ocean swell and strong rip currents. From the top of the dune the Banc d'Arguin sandbank and the Cap Ferret point are laid out below, which is the view most visitors come for. The climb is either a seasonal staircase or the sand itself, which is harder than it looks.

Development is limited to a car park, a seasonal concession area and the staircase; the dune is a classified site and nothing may be built on it. Paragliders launch from the crest, and the beach is patrolled in summer between marked flags. The pine forest behind holds campsites, which is where most of the summer traffic originates.

The dune is the reason to come and the beach is what happens to be at the bottom of it. The climb has no easy version — the staircase is seasonal and the sand is the alternative — and there is no way to see the thing without making it. Below, the Atlantic runs strong past the entrance to the basin and the flags are not decoration; the rips here have killed people who could swim perfectly well.