SummitPost.org

As an introduction, this albumfor those who haven't seen it.
After watching Eric's latest magnificent pictures of Pravčická Brana, often said to be Europe's largest with 16m both in height and width, and Vid's newest pictures of Pont d'Arc on the Ardèche river, I wondered if it was really the largest, seeing so many other impressive arches in all limestone mountain zones of southern Europe.
Popped on this site describing "L'arche naturelle de Chartreuse", said here to be Europe's largest too (without dimensions mentioned however), and Alp's largest on other pages :
http://siou.free.fr/General/Pages/mount ... ando2.html
Remembering other large arches I've seen, I just wondered if both Etretat sea arches in the french Normandy were not larger as well, especially the Manneporte, whose dimentions I failed to find on internet, wikipedia and so on. But the Manneporte cape is said to be 60mh; if we watch carefully the picture, the arch is almost mid-height, so let's say 25m at least, and the width kind of same scale, which makes it easily concurring with Pravčická Brana.
http://media.lonelyplanet.com/lpimg/286 ... review.jpg
As for Pont d'Arc on the Ardèche, it seems that no doubt are remaining, 60 m wide and 40 m high :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_d%27Arc
Any other ideas ? Lots of googling !

Judging by your amount of posts, Belgian weather must be catastrophic compared to the Polish one
Talking seriously, it's kind of amazing. Sunny bike ride on monday in the mountains, heavy snowfall yesterday, and sun again today ! (however fresh; I had to remove the frost on my car windows today morning !)
And back to the topic. Any arches in Belgium ? Don't you have one of those on the cliffs coasts ?

Cliff coasts, in Belgium? You kidding me?

This is what the Belgian coast looks like:


I'm guessing you'll have to look at Spain for some other nice arches. I remember there were some when I was still living in Mallorca, but can't remember the names or places.

In Italy that's one of the most important natural arcs:

http://www.veneto.to/web/guest/itinerar ... 76&lang=it

Some interesting sites about natural arcs in the world:

http://www.taringa.net/posts/imagenes/9 ... undo_.html (in Spanish)

http://www.naturalarches.org/links2.htm

Here in Central Spain:


El Hueso (La Pedriza)

More interesting sites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lo ... ral_arches

http://www.naturalarches.org/big-FairyBridge.htm

http://www.naturalarches.org/gallery.htm

Thanks Diego !
Worth doing a sort of true classification such the data on internet are various...

WouterB wrote:Cliff coasts, in Belgium? You kidding me?

This is what the Belgian coast looks like:

Not really...



Belgian coast look more like this:



I've read somewhere, that after Monaco, it's the most built-up coast line in Europe...

Here's a CLOSE-up of the beach ...