The Landes Forest

This is the largest planted forest in western Europe and it makes no attempt to pretend otherwise. Through the nineteenth century the marshy, poor-draining plain south of Bordeaux was drained and the coastal dunes were fixed, and maritime pine was put in across the whole triangle between the Gironde, the Adour and the sea. What resulted is a working forest of straight tracks and even-aged blocks, worked for resin until the trade collapsed and now for timber and paper. Inside it are the airials, sandy clearings where the old farm groups stood, and a regional park that keeps some of the older landscape legible. It is calm, flat, enormous, and repetitive by design.

History

The forest is almost entirely planted, mostly with maritime pine: planting began in the 18th century in the Pays de Buch to halt erosion, and most of the region, then swampy and thinly settled, was transformed after the law of 19 June 1857 ended traditional sheep grazing and launched reforestation on a vast scale. Before then the people of the Landes moved across the wet ground on stilts. The forest now covers about 10,000 square kilometres, nine tenths of it pine monoculture, with a remnant of natural mixed forest of oak, alder, birch, willow and holly along the streams; since the 1970s parts have been cleared for intensive farming, and a storm in January 2009 damaged some 300,000 hectares, mostly here (Wikipedia, Landes forest).

What's there

• The planted grid - straight sand tracks and even-aged stands, a plantation not a wild wood.
• Resin scars - old pines still carrying the cut faces from the tapping trade.
• The airials - sandy open clearings where the traditional farm groups were built.
• The cycle network - flat, surfaced paths running for miles and out to the coast.

When to go

May to October, with spring and early autumn the most comfortable for cycling. High summer is hot and still under the pines, and mosquitoes are bad near any standing water. Autumn brings mushroom pickers to the tracks. In dry, windy spells the fire risk closes forest roads at short notice, and those closures are enforced.

What to expect

It is a plantation and it looks like one: kilometre after kilometre of identical pine on identical tracks, which some people find restful and others find dull past bearing. Navigation is genuinely confusing without a map, since every junction looks the same. Storms have flattened large blocks and the gaps are still visible. Insects in summer are a real nuisance.

Nearby

The Atlantic beaches and lakes lie west, and Mont-de-Marsan sits at the southern edge.

Key facts