River · Spain, France
Garonne
The Garonne starts high in the Pyrenees in Spain and then flows through south-west France. It passes Toulouse and Bordeaux and joins the Dordogne to form the Gironde, a wide estuary that opens into the Atlantic.
Picture credit: Rémih (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Tiia Monto (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Garonne?
The river starts here: Near the Refugi de Saboredo in the Val d'Aran, Spanish Pyrenees.
It ends in the Gironde estuary (with the Dordogne), Atlantic Ocean.
Countries on the river: Spain, France.
The story behind it
The Garonne begins at about 2 600 metres, near a mountain hut in the Val d'Aran in Spain. After a short journey through Spain it crosses into France and flows on to Toulouse. There the river has flooded the city again and again; one of the earliest recorded floods was in 1177. Further on, a canal runs beside the river, and together with the Canal du Midi it links the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea. At Bordeaux the curved riverbanks gave the old harbour its name: the Port of the Moon, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Garonne is one of the few rivers in the world with a tidal bore: when the tide comes in, a wave rolls up the river, and surfers ride it as far as the village of Cambes. The last European sea sturgeon, giant fish up to about 6 metres long, also live here.
Questions children ask
How long is the Garonne?
The Garonne is about 575 km long, and about 529 km of it lies in France. Because some sources count only the French part, the figures differ depending on the measurement.
What is the mascaret?
The mascaret is a tidal bore: when the tide rises, a wave pushes up the river against the current. Surfers and jet skiers ride it as far as Cambes, about 120 km from the Atlantic.
Which rare fish lives in the Garonne?
The European sea sturgeon, which can grow up to about 6 metres long. Its last population lives in the Gironde, Garonne and Dordogne, and it last spawned in the wild in the Garonne in 1994.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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