Dune of Pilat, France (September 12, 2025)
When Violet and I rolled into Pessac, France, to meet our host, Sally Mahamdeh, we told her that what we’d love to do is see the ocean (having just spent a fair amount of time in the mountains). She knew just the place and took us to the Dune of Pilat: a truly spectacular dune connecting the forest and ocean.
Ocean selfie with Sally Mahamdeh before heading to the Dune of Pilat
“What’s the big deal?” I can feel you asking. “I’ve been to all sorts of dunes.” Yep. Me too. I grew up in northern California. Salmon Creek is littered with dunes protecting the best beaches. But none of them are like this one. I’ve never had to take stairs to get to the top of a dune.
About half way up. I’m shooting a picture UP at Violet and DOWN at Sally below.
Okay, so maybe we’re closer to the bottom, but it was a lot of stairs!
Neither Violet or I are ones to complain about climbing stairs. We actively seek out stairs where we can, but when you add the element of sand, navigating the stairs is suddenly a bit more complicated. It’s slower and trickier to make sure you don’t slip off. Did I mention there were a lot of stairs?
Of course, stairs are optional. You can also “dig in” and walk up the dune
All of this is just to give this dune some element of scale. It’s very large and separates the forest from the ocean. What’s so beautiful about this dune is that once at the top you can see for miles in all directions. On one side you see a sweeping view of the dark green forest. On the other you see the ocean and a small “Fire Island” looking spit of land that creates a bay between the ocean and the land closest to the dune in some parts.
You can also see a recent fire that spread through the forest in the bottom row of the gallery pictures. While unfortunate, the trees are already regrowing and sometimes the best thing that can happen for a forest is a (natural) fire to clear away the old growth and allow new growth. Violet and I were sharing what we had learned from our discussion with a few of the park rangers at Yellowstone National Park when we had shared with them our concerns about the impact of the natural fires started by lightning strikes.
It’s hard to know how much of this is truly “nature doing its thing” versus the growing impact of climate change. Probably a bit of both. Either way, the views from the top of the Dune of Pilat were striking and we enjoyed our time surveying both the forest and the ocean from up high. Not quite the height of the Pyrenees mountains we were visiting yesterday, but still a wonderful view all the same.
After that, we had the pleasure of coming home and meeting Tiwa (pronounced “Tia”) and having dinner with her:
Tiwa loves pickles (just like Violet and I do)
I also learned that Sally is good friends with Sabina Incolo (Nalepa) in Kinghorn, Scotland where I met Keito. My only challenge is that I don’t speak French and Tia is just learning English so we’re going to have to use the language of “drawing” and “play” to connect. We’ll see how that goes.
Let the next adventure begin!
