Beaches in Nouvelle Aquitaine
2 beaches · 2 beach worlds
The French Atlantic coast from the Gironde to the Spanish border — around two hundred and fifty kilometres of almost unbroken sand backed by the largest pine forest in Europe, planted in the nineteenth century to stabilise the dunes and still doing it. The swell arriving here is why the region is Europe's principal surf coast, and why its rip currents are among the most dangerous. The safety picture is the most serious on the French coast: these beaches account for a large share of the country's coastal drownings, patrolled zones are marked with blue flags and staffed only in summer, and the water outside them is genuinely dangerous rather than nominally so. The Dune du Pilat at Arcachon is the tallest in Europe, over a hundred metres, and is still moving inland across the forest behind it. Biarritz at the southern end is where surfing entered Europe in 1956 and where the sea-bathing habit arrived a century earlier with Napoleon III. Between them, Cap Ferret, Lacanau and Hossegor are the surf towns, and the Arcachon basin behind the dune is an oyster lagoon rather than a beach. Practically: the beaches are wide and the tidal range large enough to change their size through the day, and the season runs June to September with August full.
The two are different kinds of shore. Both sit on open ocean, and both are reached on foot. Together they account for 3.9 km of shore. · computed from the 2 records below
