Dizzying canyons, glacial cirques, bottomless chasms and rocks sculpted by millions of years of erosion: France has a geology of rare richness, light years from the clichéd image of nothing but castles and stone villages.
This selection brings together ten sites where nature has done the greatest work, with no notable human intervention, offering landscapes as spectacular as those of the great foreign national parks.
From Provence to the Pyrenees via Corsica and the Alps, these are the natural curiosities worth the detour, even if it means putting on good walking shoes.
A famous canyon with limestone walls. Above all see: the Point Sublime (400 m high), the Barre de l'Escalès (cliff), the Baume aux Bœufs tunnel cave, the St-Maurin waterfalls...
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This exceptional mountain landscape, which spreads on both sides of the present national borders of France and Spain, is centred on the Mont Perdu peak, a limestone massif that peaks at 3,352 metres.
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A huge glacial cirque of the Giffre valley, ringed by cliffs over 500 metres high streaked with waterfalls.
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Mont Aiguille, one of the seven wonders of the Dauphiné. Mont Aiguille was once called "Mont Inaccessible" because climbing it was thought impossible.
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The Bavella needles (or "Towers of Asinao") are north-west of Porto-Vecchio, between Zonza and Solenzara in the Bavella massif.
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The Padirac chasm is a natural cavity 75 m deep that opens in the surface of the Causse de Gramat in the Lot, beneath which, at 103 m, flows an underground river.
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The Désert de Platé is a unique place where you find the largest area of limestone pavement (lapiaz) in the Alps.
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A spectacular 2 km canyon in Haute-Soule, with walls reaching 350 metres high, discovered in 1906 by the speleologist Édouard-Alfred Martel.
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Like other famous sites of the Grands Causses, the Cirque de Navacelles is visited every year by millions of tourists who come to admire the cut of the Vis canyon through the limestones and dolomites of the Causse de Blandas.
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Former open-air ochre quarries, worked until 1992, forming a landscape of blazing colours reminiscent of American canyons.
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