The French Atlantic coast runs more than seven hundred kilometres from Brittany to the Spanish border. It is a different country from the Mediterranean: big tides, real waves, pine forests and a harder, clearer light.
Arcachon Bay
The Dune du Pilat is the tallest sand dune in Europe at a hundred and ten metres, and it advances a few metres each year into the forest behind it. The staircase takes fifteen minutes and the view covers the Arguin sandbank and the open ocean. The bay itself lives from oyster farming: the huts at Gujan-Mestras and Cap Ferret serve oysters at prices unrelated to those in town restaurants.
Biarritz and the Basque Country
Biarritz launched European surfing in the 1950s and remains the French capital of the sport. The Grande Plage suits supervised beginners, the Côte des Basques experienced surfers. Further south, Saint-Jean-de-Luz sits in a bay closed by breakwaters, giving calm water suited to families. Inland, Espelette and Sare can be seen in a day and change the scenery completely.
La Rochelle and the islands
La Rochelle has kept its three medieval towers and a working old harbour. The Île de Ré, reached by a toll bridge, is covered by a hundred kilometres of cycle paths between salt marshes and white villages with green shutters. The Île d Oléron is larger, cheaper and draws a more family-oriented crowd.
Safety in the water
The Atlantic is not the Mediterranean. Baïnes, the hollows scoured between sandbars, generate powerful outgoing currents and are the leading cause of drowning on the Aquitaine coast. The rule is simple: swim only in supervised zones between the flags, and never fight a current head-on, but swim parallel to the beach until it releases you.
When to come
The sea reaches twenty to twenty-two degrees in August and stays swimmable into late September. June gives empty beaches and long days but water around eighteen degrees. Wind is a constant factor: it makes the heat bearable but can spoil a beach day even in July.
The forest behind the beaches
The pine forest of the Landes, planted from the nineteenth century onwards to stabilise the dunes and drain the marshes, is the largest man-made forest in western Europe. It runs almost unbroken for two hundred kilometres behind the coast and is threaded with flat cycle paths, which makes this one of the easiest coastlines in France to explore without a car. It also explains the resin scent that hangs over the beaches on hot afternoons.
The Atlantic asks for more attention than the Mediterranean. In exchange it still has the space the south has lost.