Forest of Fontainebleau

The Forest of Fontainebleau covers 25,000 hectares of mixed woodland southeast of Paris, scattered with sandstone boulders that have made it one of the world's great bouldering destinations. Climbers come from across Europe to work the circuits — colour-coded sequences of problems that wind through the forest from easy orange circuits to fearsome black ones. The sandstone requires strong fingers and precise footwork; the problems are technical rather than powerful.

For non-climbers, the forest is simply a beautiful place to walk. In autumn the beeches and oaks turn red and gold, and the low sandstone formations give the landscape a sculptural quality entirely unlike the flat forests around it. The Gorges de Franchard and the Gorges d'Apremont are the most dramatic sections. Maps are available at the tourist office in town; the colour-coded trail system is reasonably well marked.

things to do sight
A story
The sandstone boulders scattered through the forest became a training ground for Parisian alpinists in the 1870s and 1880s, long before sport climbing existed as a concept. A group of Parisian climbers called the Boules de Fort created graded circuits through the boulders — the world's first climbing grades. Every grading system used today in rock climbing traces its lineage back to those coloured paint marks on Fontainebleau sandstone.