Dune of Pilat

About

The Dune of Pilat, also called Grande Dune du Pilat, is the best sand dune in Europe. It is located in La Teste-de-Buch in the Arcachon Bay area, France, 60 km (37.2 mi) southwest of Bordeaux along France's Atlantic coastlines.

Rental: The Dune of Pilat is located at the southern entrance to the Arcachon basin, in the locality of Pyla-sur-Mer, which is administratively dependent on the municipality of La Teste-de-Buch, near Arcachon, in the heart of the Landes de Gascogne.

Characteristics: The dune 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 (1.35 km2). Its height was 106.60 m above sea level as of 2018. The dune is considered a foredune, meeting 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 putting the forest back to cover houses, roads and portions of the Atlantic Wall. To back this evidence of coastal movement, maps from 1708 and 1786 both place areas with the name Pilat to the south and offshore of the current dune's location. The area where the...