Cirque de Gavarnie

FRENCH FRIDAYS

Every now and then, you come across something so beautiful that you can’t believe your luck. The Cirque de Gavarnie in the Pyrenees is one of those things.

Why hadn’t I heard about it earlier? Years earlier.

 After all, UNESCO describes these sweeping rings of rock as a World Heritage Site. Yet it seems as though I was not alone – even the tourist office in Toulouse, its nearest city, barely mentions it.

So much the better for the rest of us, I suppose.

The Cirque is a curving slice of the Pyrenees that forms – as many have said before me - a natural amphitheatre. Its peaks reach up to 3000 metres and waterfall jets breed across its splintered surfaces, forming rainbow haloes against the snow. Most of these springs are small and spirited, but one gathers momentum to form the Grand Cascade de Gavarnie, spilling down through 423 metres to win the title of Europe’s longest waterfall.

Plenty of walking routes skirt around the Cirque de Gavarnie, with difficulty levels ranging from the seriously-keen to the I-only-do-this-sort-of-thing-when-I’m-on-holiday.