Cirque de Gavarnie

A glacially carved cirque on the Franco-Spanish border in the Hautes-Pyrénées, its horseshoe of walls rising over 1,000 metres in a single vertical face, with Europe's highest waterfall at 422 metres cascading from the rim. The cirque is the centrepiece of the Pyrénées - Mont Perdu UNESCO World Heritage site and accessible by a 9-kilometre return valley walk from the village of Gavarnie. The scale of the amphitheatre walls dwarfs the surrounding forest and is most dramatic in late spring when snowmelt sustains the full flow of the Grande Cascade.