The Verdon Gorge drops as much as 700 metres into a pale limestone plateau in Provence, and along its floor runs a river of such vivid turquoise-green that the French call this the Grand Canyon of Europe. The colour is no trick of the light: fine glacial rock flour and microscopic algae hang suspended in the current and scatter sunlight toward green and blue, glowing against the grey walls on either side. The Verdon River carved all of it over millions of years, cutting down through limestone that once lay on the bed of ancient seas and was later heaved upward with the Alps. For some 25 kilometres the canyon squeezes to as little as six metres across at the water and opens to a hundred at its widest, before spilling into the man-made turquoise of Lake Sainte-Croix at its western end.
Verdon is a place to get into rather than just look at. You can paddle a canoe into the mouth of the gorge and drift beneath walls that climb straight out of the water, or take the clifftop Route des Crêtes, where the road hangs over the void and griffon vultures wheel below the guardrail. Walkers descend the Sentier Martel to the canyon floor by way of steel ladders and a dark tunnel, while climbers come for more than 1,500 bolted routes on rock so good that the Verdon became the birthplace of modern sport climbing. The Pont de l'Artuby, 182 metres above the riverbed, ranks among Europe's highest bungee-jumping bridges. Today the whole canyon lies within the Verdon Regional Natural Park, and its once-wild river is held downstream by the 1970s dam that drowned a village to fill Lake Sainte-Croix.