Plan your visit
Étang de Hourtin-Carcans is one of France’s great natural sites — bring good shoes and a camera. Locate it on the map, book a room nearby in a click, or add it to your travel list to build your itinerary.
About Étang de Hourtin-Carcans
The largest natural freshwater lake in France, the Étang de Hourtin-Carcans stretches for some 18 kilometres behind the wild dunes of the northern Médoc, hemmed in by one of the country's great maritime pine forests. Its long, sandy shores and shallow, gently warming water make it a paradise for swimming, sailing, windsurfing and paddleboarding, while a flat cycle path runs the length of the lake and on toward the Atlantic beaches. Away from the busy resorts of Hourtin and Maubuisson, quiet reed beds and marshy margins shelter otters, herons and migrating birds. Vast, luminous and framed by forest and dune, this is nature on a grand Landes scale, freshwater and ocean side by side.