Journal
France
Geographically, France is the largest nation in West Europe. Within its 547,030km2, excluding overseas territories, there are waterways and lakes covering 1,400km2 while 80 per cent of the land mass is countryside and 25 per cent of the total covered in forests. Theme parks for sports and tourism include more than 500 golf courses. On the Atlantic coast, Biarritz claims to be the cradle of continental golf since 1888 and on the Mediterranean, the Côte d’Azur has 20 courses for year-round use. Normandy competes with more than 40 top-class courses, said to be the most highly prized by real golfers and virtually all designed by internationally known players, from Jack Nicklaus to Gary Player. In winter, France is a skier’s paradise with the largest and most developed ski resorts in the world and more than 8,000km of pistes for alpine skiing, as well as designated areas for all the new acrobatic snow sports and “natural and ecological” activities such as dog sledding, trekking in snow shoes and Nordic skiing. Among the more unusual man-made landscapes are those for cultivating natural salt. From South Brittany to the Camargue there are traditional, thousand year old, harbour areas laid out like giant chessboards where “fleur de sel”, unrefined sea salt crystals, are raked out of pools. And, did you know that France is Europe’s leading nudist centre, with holiday villages on beaches, in pine forests and in the mountains? Discuss this article
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