Dune du Pilat

The sand rises more than a hundred metres from the pine forest floor and the Atlantic crashes at the base, invisible until you crest the ridge and it fills the horizon. The Dune du Pilat, on the French Atlantic coast, is the tallest sand dune in Europe — a moving, breathing mass of grain that shifts inland a few metres a year, slowly swallowing the trees behind it. The climb is barefoot, the sand hot, and the reward is total.

The dune runs nearly three kilometres along the coast at the mouth of the Arcachon basin, on the southern shore where the bay opens to the ocean, and it is to the basin what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris — the thing you cannot not see. In season a staircase of a hundred and sixty steps goes up the landward face; out of season, and for anyone who prefers it, the climb is straight up the sand. From the top the panorama takes in the whole Arcachon basin, the Atlantic, the green of the pines and the white of the Banc d'Arguin, the sandbank and bird reserve that lies across the channel. Paragliders launch off the crest on the sea breeze, and the oyster villages of the basin are a few minutes away. The wind moves the dune eastward year by year over the forest, and in dry summers the pine woods around it are under fire alert and the site can close at short notice; it reopens when the risk passes.