LARGEST and TALLEST - Sand Dune in Europe - La Teste-de-Buch, France
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N 44° 35.931 W 001° 12.332
30T E 642415 N 4939955
The Great Dune of Pyla is located 60 km south-west from Bordeaux in La Teste-de-Buch in the Arcachon Bay area of France. It is over 100 meters tall, the tallest in Europe, and 500 meters wide.
Waymark Code: WM15F47
Location: Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France
Date Posted: 12/24/2021
Views: 4
The Great Dune of Pyla (or Pilat) is the tallest sand dune in Europe. It has a volume of about 60,000,000 m³, measuring around 500 m wide from east to west and 2.7 km in length from north to south. Its height is 108 metres above sea level. It is considered a foredune, meaning a dune that runs parallel to a shoreline, behind the high tide line of a beach. The dune has been observed to move landward, slowly pushing the forest back to cover houses, roads and even portions of the Atlantic Wall.
The dune is a famous tourist destination with more than one million visitors per year. Access to the dune is not restricted and you can climb it from any point. During the summer months a 154-step staircase is attached to the side of the dune to help you reach the top easily. At the top you are surrounded by the forests of the Landes on one side and the Atlantic ocean on the other side. The entry to the dune is free.
On 24 January 2009, a peak windspeed of 175 km/h (109 mph) was recorded during a storm at the dune, damaging the dune.
The current location of Dune du Pilat housed temporary protohistoric camps for activities related to sea salt mining. The first archaeological discoveries began in 1922. On December 31, 2013, a tourist found a funeral urn and an accessory vase from the Iron Age, 800 years BC in the sand at the foot of the dune.
An excavation site mobilized about ten amateur archaeologists for two weeks in October 2014 to clarify the stratigraphic and environmental context of the reported discoveries.
Due to its exposed location along the sea and steep angle, the Dune of Pilat is a famous paragliding spot with great soaring conditions.
Source: Wikipedia (
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