Do you remember running full tilt down a hill as a toddler and it feeling like your legs were moving faster than the rest of your body? The closest I’ve come to reliving that sensation is running down Europe’s tallest sand dune.
The Dune du Pilat near Bordeaux in France has a fair shot at being one of the weirdest places on Earth. It’s maybe the only dune on the planet to be nestled between the ocean, an enormous pine forest, a bay (the Bay of Arcachon), a sandbank and a peninsula!
When Esme and I went on a weekend trip to Bordeaux there were two places at the top of our list of places to visit. The Natural History Museum and the dune. The scaffolding, ring of fences and large sign outside suggested to us in seven languages that the museum was shut for repairs. So there was no chance we were missing the dune.
It takes about ten minutes to walk (slowly) to the top. From the ridge you can stare out into the Atlantic Ocean in one direction and over a vast expanse of pine forest in the other. This is awesome and strange in equal measures. Actually, it’s about 60% awesome and 40% strange.
It took us all of about two seconds to decide we were running back down. Nobody else seemed to be but the golden rule of being on top of a hill is either you run down or you roll down–and we didn’t see why this shouldn’t be equally applicable for sand dunes, which, at the end of the day, are just big sandy hills anyway.
I won’t describe what it’s like running down the dune because the toddler analogy I opened with is about as far as my descriptions stretch. But I will say that as soon we reached the bottom I decided to trudge right back up to the top and run down again. And then again.
By the time I was puffed out and Esme was tired of looking unimpressed it was time for us to go. As we tur
ned to leave we saw a number of others people had starting bolting down the dune. Smart move.
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