Chapter XII: Preface: To the Fourth Edition (10)

The Canigou, whichever way one looks at it, is a separate district and must be separately approached and separately travelled in. It stands apart from the rest of the range, it has a different character, and travel in it is of a different sort from other Pyrenean travel. It is not only physically cut off from the rest of the Pyrenees, indeed, its physical isolation has been a good deal exaggerated by people who have looked up to it from the plain and have not carefully noted its plan; it is rather morally cut off by the way in which it dominates one particular province and one famous plain to the exclusion of every other peak; so that when you are going through the Roussillon, especially along the sea coast, the only thing you can think of is the Canigou, which seems to be as much the lonely spirit of the district, as Etna does of the sea east of Sicily, or as Vesuvius does of the Bay of Naples. It will perhaps sound surprising or unlikely to those of my readers who know the Pyrenees, when I say that the Canigou is not physically isolated from the chain, it is indeed less isolated in its way than is the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, or even the Pic du Midi d’Ossau, for it is connected with the south by a high ridge which one can hardly ever see at full length from the plain, and which is, I think, only clearly observable from the frontier heights south of Arles upon the Tech. How thorough is the connexion, however, what follows will show.

The Canigou is somewhat over 9000 feet in height, to be accurate 9135, yet it is but the terminal point _and not the highest point_ in a long ridge which runs south-westward to the frontier at the Roque Couloum. It next forms that frontier for 15 or 20 miles, and is then continued past the Port de Col Toses into Spain, where it forms the magnificent wall of the Sierra del Cadi.

A man without heart or vision would see in the Canigou nothing but the last northern point of that long range, but the political accident which makes the Roussillon French, the cross chain which springs from the Pic de Couloun and runs to the Mediterranean, and above all the aspect of the mountains from the civilized wealthy plain to the north and east (where the connecting ridge cannot be seen), and its false appearance of isolation when one observes it from the sea, all make of the Canigou one of the most individual mountains in Europe.

There are, as I have said, many heights in its own ridge, further to the south and west, which surpass it. The Donyais is within a few feet of it, the Enfer or Gous and the Pic du Géant next door, above the valley of the Tet, are higher; the Puigmal just on the watershed is much higher. The summit of the Canigou is but 1500 or 1600 feet above the crest of the ridge in its own immediate neighbourhood, and even the lowest point in that ridge (the Col de Boucacers) is not 2000 feet below it. Nevertheless, it produces, as I have said, an effect of unity and of isolation, and there is not only the illusion of its outline as seen from the north and east, but also the fact that the mountain spreads out in a fan of ridges from its summit to the lowlands all around, and stands upon a broad expanded base, more or less circular in shape, spreading from the Tech upon the south to the Tet upon the east, north, and west.

The Canigou is not a mountain that gives one any climbing to speak of, or that affords any problems or difficulties. There is even, nowadays, a carriage road most of the way up on the northern side, but it is the best place for camping and changing camp that you can find anywhere. All the flanks of it are covered with a series of dense woods; they form a belt 2 or 3 miles deep (in places nearly 5) and running almost continuously round the whole mountain, a circuit of at least 30 miles. Your choice for halting and camping places in these woods is infinite, there is water everywhere and you are nowhere too far from provisions. If you will take the road from Villefranche up to Vernet you will, at that village, be near the steepest side of the mountain and a wood which everywhere affords excellent camping ground. By following up the path to Casteil and taking the track which leads south and east from that hamlet, you are at the inhabited point nearest to its summit, and you have wood and water up to the last mile in distance, or the last 2000 feet in height; but remember, if you wish to make for the summit by this trail, that you must always bear to the right as you walk, choosing always the right-hand trail when there is a diversion, and coming out on the south side of that ridge which has the summit at one end and the Peak de Quazémi at the other. On the open part of this steep bit there is a definitely marked path which follows the left bank of the stream until it is right under the last rocks of the Canigou and then makes straight up by zigzags. If you would go the easier way which everybody takes, you must start from Prades, which is the town of the mountain, and in which anyone will show you the house where the local agent of the French Alpine Club is ready with information.

Your road goes through Taurinya (or if you start from Villefranche, through Fillols), and the new carriage road runs up the ridge between the two valleys—the valley of the Fillols and the valley of Taurinya—first over open country, then through wood until you come to quite the upper part of the Taurinya, where the road turns round the steep corner overhanging the sources of the torrent. This particular wood is called the wood of Balatag, a word that is not so hard to pronounce in Catalan as in French, for the Catalans add an “e” at the end of it.

The road does not go to the actual summit, but comes out on to the shoulder of the mountains, an open space looking to the north, north-west and east, where stands the hotel which has been put up by the French Alpine Club. This hotel is not quite 2000 feet below the highest summit which lies exactly to the south of it. The other summit to the north-east, the ridge of which comes round behind the hotel, is the Pic Puigdarbet. You must allow five or six hours to get to the hotel without haste from the valley of the Tet, and the road is somewhat shorter if you start from Villefranche, than if you start from Prades, but of the two ways, much the more interesting for a man on foot is the old way by Casteil and the Brook Cady which I first described. Here you can camp half-way up the mountain without fear of disturbance from travellers, choosing, for preference, the end of the wood just under the summit, and so make that summit at dawn.

Unless you are in a hurry to get on to Perpignan, one of the best ways of treating the Canigou is to go across it from the valley of the Tet into the valley of the Tech, and from Arles on the Tech to take the railway through Ceret and Elne to Perpignan.

It is of course a long way round, but it shows you both sides of the mountain.

You could hardly get right across the main ridge from the hotel; but you can take the path that goes round the northern flank of the mountain, that is, through the wood that clothes the buttresses of the Pic Bargebit, and that comes out in the valley of the Dalmanya, a torrent running down north-eastwards from the summit. If you are afraid of losing your way you can go down into the village of Dalmanya and up thence by a clear path from the church of the village to the iron mines under the Col de Cirere; from that col there is a very winding high road (of which of course you can cut off most of the turnings) which gets you down to Corsady and so to Arles. On the southern side of the mountain you can go down the path which follows the Brook of Cady, and do your best to note the Peak of the Thirteen Winds which is the peak precisely due south of the main summit and 3000 feet from it at the end of the long ridge. When you have made quite certain which is the Peak of the Thirteen Winds, cross the brook, and work up if you can to the saddle immediately south-west of it, and between it and the Pic de Routat, which is a trifle lower and rises a thousand yards to the south-west of the Peak of the Thirteen Winds.

This col is called the Portaillet, and the valley on the further side is called “The Old or Abandoned Pass.” When you have got across you will know why. A wood covers its lower part, and a little brook called the Cambret runs through it, but there is no regular path, and it is a business to find the first huts, which are at an open space upon the stream between it and the wood, and quite 4000 feet below the col.

The descent is exceedingly steep, and there I leave it.

From these huts (which are called St. Duillem) is a good plain path down to the Tech, and to the little hamlet which has the same name as the river (Le Tech) whence the national high road takes one in 6 miles to Arles, the more usual crossing (which is not really a crossing of the mountains at all, but a crossing of the ridge to the south of it) is by the Pla de Guillem, so called because it does not go near Guillem, and this way is as plain as a pike-staff. You take the road from Villefranche to Fuilla, which is not quite 3 miles off, first up the Tet, then to the left southwards up a lateral valley, you follow that lateral valley and the high road up it from Fuilla to Py, rather more than 5 miles on, and southward all the way from Py a path goes south-west up the right bank of a torrent which comes in there. The track is quite clear and carries you up to the sources of the stream, and to the saddle in the final ridge which is called the Pla de Guillem. It is a steep climb of nearly 4000 in rather more than 4 miles. Py at the junction of the streams is just over 3200 feet above the sea. The pass is about 7000.

On the further side also the track is quite plain, pointing down due south-east through a little wood and then over the open country. It takes you down to Prats de Mollo, a jolly little town, the last on the great national road and the highest in the Tech valley. Above it the national road becomes the local road leading to the baths and waters.

So late as the Revolutionary Wars Mollo was of importance and may be again, for the Spanish armies could come over (but not with guns) from the other Mollo, which lies beyond the frontier 7 or 8 miles off south-east, over the Col of Arras. Mollo is a little lower than Py, but the descent upon it is far less steep than was the ascent upon Py. From Mollo it is somewhat more than 10 miles to Arles by the national road down the valley.

* * * * *

The Canigou is so particular a thing that if a man has but little time before him, or if he already knows the other Pyrenees—he might do worse than go to Perpignan and spend a week upon that mountain. It should be remembered that you have a better chance of fine weather there than in any other part of the Pyrenees, and you will usually have dryer days upon the Tech side than upon the Tet side.

With these eight divisions I have roughly covered the chain of the Pyrenees for those who may, like myself, think that all travel on these mountains should be on foot. It is, of course, but a very rough and general survey, but it would give one, all taken together, a comprehensive knowledge of the chain. My limits have necessarily excluded very many valleys, some of which are unknown to me, such as the valley of Isaba. Among those which I have not dealt with should be considered especially the Ribagorza, which is the boundary between the Aragonese and the Catalan tongues, and runs parallel to Pallars or the valley of Esterri, and can be reached from the valley with some difficulty by Espot and the high Portaron above it, or much more easily from Viella in the Val d’Aran, by the high Port de Viella, which leads straight into the Ribagorza and down to Bono. There are also entrances in and out of Andorra, of which I did not speak, notably the Porte Blanche, which you make from Porta in the Val Carol, a mile or two south of Porté. This way involves two cols, one very high one, the Porte Blanche, another lower one immediately after, the Port de Vallcivera. It is, however, the shortest way from a French high road to Andorra the Old. There is another way in and out of Andorra, very little used, by the Col de la Boella from Ordino to the Val Farrera. All the Basque valleys besides those I mention, and notably that of the Isaba, are places that should be known, and of the passages over the range, which I have not dealt with in detail, one, the road from St. Girons to Esterri by the Port de Salau, will soon be an international highway. It presents no difficulties and no very considerable interest. But if the traveller finds himself by some accident in St. Girons with but a day or two in which to see Spain, here is a very easy way of getting over into what is still one of the remotest parts of that country.

VII

INNS OF THE PYRENEES

There is nothing more necessary to the knowledge of a district if one desires to enjoy travel in it, than to have some directions upon its inns. I cannot pretend in what follows to give any complete list of the inns which the traveller will find in the Pyrenees, but I will try to do what the guide-books do not do, and that is to indicate what an Englishman, especially one on foot, may expect in the different valleys. The foreign guide-books rarely do this well: the Scotch and English guide-books never; for the general phrases which they use about inns and hotels leave one as full of doubt and terror as though nothing had been said about them, and they always fail to speak good or evil of the _people_, the _cooking_, and _the wine_—which are the three main things one wants to hear about.

First then, as to the difference between the Spanish and the French side.

Though the Basques are one race upon either side of the frontier, and the Catalans also, yet a single rule governs the whole length of the chain, which is that French cooking and French hours are to be found to the north of the political frontier, and Spanish to the south. This is a matter in which the difference of Government has, in the course of some generations of travel, produced a very marked effect. The Val d’Aran, for instance, is geographically and racially French. Its river is the Upper Garonne, there is no obstacle between it and the French plain, but only one good descending road to unite them both; yet your experiences of an inn in the Val d’Aran will in general resemble your experiences of an inn beyond the mountains in the purely Spanish valley of the Noguera.

Similarly the neighbourhood of Saillagouse and all the French Cerdagne is geographically and racially Spanish, the river running through it is the Upper Segre (a tributary of the Ebro), and one road with no obstacle at the frontier, unites the French to the Spanish portion of the valley, yet the hours, habits, cooking, and everything in the inns of the French Cerdagne are French, in those of the Spanish Cerdagne, Spanish; and generally you must be prepared, when you cross the frontier, for a different kind of hospitality.

The French rule of an inn is probably well known to all who will read this. The coffee in the morning, the first meal at or a little before mid-day, the second at six or seven at the latest, and so forth. In Spain they will give you chocolate for your first meal. Your mid-day meal will be at the same hour as the French, but your last meal much later: eight is a usual hour. In France, if you ask for food at an odd time it will be prepared for you; in Spain also but only with incredible delays, and you find universally upon the southern side of the frontier, this difference from the French that the table d’hôte or common meal is prepared only for a fixed number of guests. Newcomers, even if they reach the place two hours before the hour of the supper, have it separately cooked for them, and will suffer a corresponding delay. Here is a national custom which nothing can change, and which is as old as the hills. It was even once universally the habit to have a separate little cooking pot for every guest, and in certain inns that habit is still continued. It is in the last degree inconvenient, and when one has pushed on to the end of some very long day, to shelter and food, it is exasperating. One sees the local people who have done nothing, eat a hearty meal; and one waits an hour or two hours before one is served with a crust. But you can no more change it than you can change any other national habit, and you must be prepared for it on the Spanish side wherever you go. All the details of the cooking are different too; notably these: that for some reason or other, the Spaniard is careless of his oil, or perhaps prefers oil to have a taste of carelessness about it: in places of rancidity. His wine is quite different from the wine of the French. It comes up to him from the hard plains of the Ebro; it has been kept in wine skins and tastes of them. As a rule drink water with, or better still after, Spanish wine. The French wine in these hills (save in the Roussillon) comes from the plains of the Garonne, and has been kept in wood. It has the taste with which we are familiar in this country; the Spanish wine has a roughness, a strength, and a memory of goat’s skin, with which, until he comes to Spain, no northern man can have any acquaintance at all.

It must not be imagined that Spanish accommodation is cheaper than French; comfort for comfort, it is, if anything, a little dearer. But the Pyrenees are cheap everywhere, save in one or two watering-places. Nearly every inn upon either side, however small, can furnish you with a guide, but not every inn with mules, and still less can you depend upon a horse or a carriage, even in places which stand upon the few great highways. If you must hire mules, you will always be able to find one in the village where the inn stands, but, for some reason connected with their local economics, the people of the inn are sometimes actively opposed and often indifferent to your hiring one, and if they tell you that there is no mule to be had (which is their way of opposing you) you must then saunter out and bargain for one with some rival, but remember that you can always get one: all these mountains are covered with herds and droves of mules. Yet mules are expensive, from 1000 to 2000 francs to buy, or even more; from 30 to 50 francs per day to hire, with the man who accompanies you. Remember also, if you have a choice where to hire, that they are better by far upon the Spanish than upon the French side. As for horses and carriages, I will, when I speak of particular inns, mention the few places where I know they can be hired.

A further difference between the French and Spanish side is that, on the whole, an inn upon the Spanish side is less likely to be clean. This does not mean that they are generally uncleanly, very far from it; the houses of the whole of the Basque country on either side are excellently kept, and this is generally true of Catalonia also, but the little hamlets, in the highest valleys which are doubtful upon both sides, are usually worse upon the southern. In every case, of course, you must ask the price of rooms, they expect it, and it is best to ask the price of meals as well. If you do not bargain in this manner, they think of you as of some one who is deliberately throwing money away and they very naturally hasten to pick it up. I remember one meal in the very unsatisfactory town or village of Llavorsi, which was as unsatisfactory as the place itself, and for which a violent Catalonian woman would have charged us the prices of Paris because we did not bargain beforehand, and this, note you, in a place where no one ever comes, which is on the road to nowhere, and which does not see tourists perhaps, or even travellers, once in six months.

In every valley there is some one inn which, if you are wise, you will choose, and which it is worth one’s while modifying one’s plans to visit. I will set down those which I know, beginning as I have done throughout this book, at the western end of the chain, and following it to the east.

In the Baztan, a Basque word for tail, for the valley resembles in shape the tail of a rat, though the other _Bas_tans in the Pyrenees, out of the Basque countries, derive their name from the Arabic word for garden, Elizondo should be your halting-place. Here there are two hotels, one old and one new, the old one in the very middle of the town on the high road, the new one a little to the north, just off the high road. This new hotel is kept by one Jarégui, and in the chief feature of all good hotels (I mean the courtesy and zeal of the management) it is far the best, not only in Elizondo, but in the whole valley. If you should wander on to Pamplona, I can give no advice, but it is a large town where a man may have pretty well what he wants according to the price he pays. My own experience of it is of lodging in small eating-houses, not in a regular hotel, but I understand that the Perla and the Europa are the two best hotels, and of these two, people, as one travels, single out the Europa. On the road from Pamplona to Roncesvalles, there is no good stopping-place. At Erro, as I have said above, there is but one inn and that a very bad one. Burguete is, however, a very pleasant village, and the Hotel des Postes is praised by those who have stopped there. Unless one is caught by night, or in some other way impeded, it is unwise to eat or to sleep at Val Carlos, the contrast between French and Spanish methods is nowhere more violent whether in the matter of cooking, or of delay, or of wine, or of any other thing, than at this corner of the frontier; but it is to be remembered that if you need a horse and carriage you can always have it at Val Carlos for going on into France, and at St. Jean Pied-de-Port you are in the best halting-place for the valley of the Nive and the whole Labourd, just as Elizondo is the best halting-place for the Baztan. St. Jean Pied-de-Port is large enough and frequented enough to have some choice of hotels. You had much better go to the best, which is the Central. The reason it will be worth your while to do this is, that though it is the best hotel in a town to which many rich people come, it is as cheap as it is good. It will always have a carriage for you if you want it, it has a garage, and it is the best centre from which to start upon any of the roads around; and if you should be coming from the north and going south there is a public service from this hotel through the pass as far as Pamplona.

In the next valley, that of the Soule (the river of which is the Saison, and the chief town Mauléon) let Tardets be your head-quarters. It has one of the most delightful inns in all the mountains, remarkable among other things for having various names, like a Greek goddess. Sometimes it is called the “Voyageurs,” sometimes the “Hotel des Pyrenees,” and it is entered under the arcade of the north-west corner of the market square. There you may dine in a sort of glass room or terrace overlooking the river, and every one will treat you well. It is, I say, one of those places that would make one hesitate to go on further into the hills the same day, but if one does, one will find the unique inn at St. Engrace, which I have already mentioned, one of the best that the smaller villages have; it must always be remembered, of course, that these upland hamlets give one nothing but their own fare, and usually a bedroom that is reached through some other, but the beds here are good and the cooking plain. This is the first house in the village on the right as you come in, and as in Elizondo, Jarégui is the name. Remember that they have various sorts of wine, and ask for their best, for even their best costs very little, and their worst is not so good. In the valley between Tardets and St. Engrace, before you leave the main road, you pass by the hotel of Licq, “Hotel des Tourists.” Licq itself you leave to the right beyond the river, but this hotel is built upon the high road. Here is a good place for one meal, though there is no point in sleeping there, yet if one is caught by some accident, one will find it comfortable enough; a little bothersome in pressing one to take guides.

The next valley, the Val d’Aspe, and its prolongation on the Spanish side, the Val d’Aragon, contain many inns, the more important of which should be known before one approaches them.

In Oloron itself, there are two good hotels of which the Voyageurs is perhaps the best, and there is, of course, every opportunity, in such a town, of hiring horses and carriages. There is also, it must be remembered, a public service twice a day up the pass as far as Urdos, not expensive but very slow: no rail yet. It will be possible also at Oloron to hire a pair of horses and a carriage if one wants one for several days to go into Spain and back by way of the Val d’Assau.

There is no occasion to stop, whatever be your mode of travel, between Oloron and Bédous, but should you take up your head-quarters at Bédous (which, it will be remembered, is in the midst of the enclosed plain which characterizes this valley), make the Hotel de la Paix your head-quarters. You will be best treated there, and it is the best centre for information upon the surrounding mountains. Accous is slightly larger than Bédous, but it is off the road and therefore less used to travellers; also it is less comfortable. So if you stop in this plain at all, stop at Bédous.

Your next point will be Urdos, there is nothing of consequence between.

Urdos, having been, for so many centuries between Roman civilization and our own, the end of the proper road over this chief pass and the jumping-off place for the mule tracks and for Spain, has many inns for its size—(it is no more than a hamlet)—but of these I will unhesitatingly recommend the _Voyageurs_, which is one of the last houses on the left of the village, having at the south end of it over the road a jolly little terrace where one dines. The drawback of Urdos is that one _may_ get bitten, and speaking of this the sovereign remedy is camphor, or rather I should say, the sovereign preventive, for all animals that bite hate the smell of camphor. But for that little drawback, Urdos is delightful and nothing is pleasanter in Urdos than the Hotel de Voyageurs, also if you go to this hotel you are following the line of least resistance, for it is in some mysterious way related to the man who drives the coach. Remember that Urdos is accustomed to every form of halt, and though it is difficult to buy things there, there is a barn for motors—and also, I believe, relays of horses for carriages.

Your next village on this main international road is Canfranc in Spain. It is just over 14 miles off with nothing but a refuge and the pass of the Somport between. The hotel is the Hotel Sisas, from which a public coach starts for Jaca daily, still, I believe; the cooking is doubtful, the wine so-so, and the people are a little spoilt, but they are very ready with horses and used to hiring them, and you can always hire a carriage or get a relay for Jaca, which is 16 miles further down by a road with no steep hills, and for the most part nearly flat. At Jaca the hotel (which I have already spoken of) is the Hotel Mur; it is excellent in every way, clean, cheerful, and not too simple in its customs, with various wines, and a knowledge of more than the Castilian tongue. The mention of this leads me to add to what I said above that the language stops very suddenly at this central frontier, or at least south of it. There will be people who will understand Spanish almost anywhere in Béarn because the local dialects are Spanish in character, but the common French of Paris means nothing to the people of Aragon and Sobrarbe; you may be in quite a big place and find no one for a long time who will understand you, while in the small hotels and inns right up against the frontier, they do not follow a word of the language.

Of the inns of Biescas I cannot speak from experience, nor of those of Panticosa, though they say that the only useful one in Biescas is the Hotel Chauces, while Panticosa has any number of places with such names as “Continental” and “Grand,” and masses of lodgings as well, among which I imagine the only choice is to take the best; nothing is really dear there, except in the month between the middle of July and the middle of August. Of Sallent, however, I can speak. There is but one inn in the place; it has many names but is best known by the name of the man who owns it, and his name is Bergua. It is an astonishing mixture. The owner is wealthy and good natured, but you do not hear the truth about things for it is coloured by self interest. The place is clean, but slow even beyond the ordinary of a Spanish inn. The cooking is neither one thing nor another, the wine is not bad. It is a place where you may spend one night, but not two. You will leave it without enthusiasm, and without regret.

Next, following the itineraries I have given, comes Gabas, and here is as pleasant an inn as you will find in the whole world, it is called the Hotel des Pyrenees, and of the several hotels it is the dearest. The family of Baylou keep it and have inherited this soil for generations. It is an ancestor of theirs that planted the delightful Mail outside and set up the charming little fountain there. They are used in this house to every sort of gentlemanly habit, they pay no attention to the clothes in which one comes, and they understand all those who love to wander in the hills. Everything is clean and good about the place, they will give one well-cooked food in many courses at any hour. There is but one criticism to make and that is in the matter of horses and carriages; these are dear, and the good and the bad cost the same money, for there is here a monopoly of the valley, and if you do not take their vehicle, you must walk to the rail-head, 8 miles lower down. Also if for some reason you must drive or get a relay of horses, the longer notice you give the better, for there are few animals to be had.

Further down the valley is Eaux Chaudes, a dreary place, incredible from the fact that it was here that much of the Heptameron was written! If a man must stop there, let him; of the sad gloomy barracks, take the largest and the dearest, which is the Hotel de France. Laruns, at the foot of the valley, where again you are unlikely to stop, but where you may be caught, has the Hotel des Touristes, where also horses and a carriage may be hired, and whence the omnibus goes to Eaux Chaudes and to Eaux Bonnes. This last place, like Panticosa, is a place one can make no choice in, it is crowded with the rich, and where the rich have spoilt things, the only rule I know is to plunge and take the dearest—which is the Hotel des Princes—if you will not do that you must choose for yourself.

The next valley, that of the Gave de Pau, has in it four towns, Lourdes, Argelès, Cauterets, and Luz. Lourdes, like all cosmopolitan towns, is detestable in its accommodation, and to make it the more detestable there is that admixture of the supernatural which is invariably accompanied by detestable earthly adjuncts. Were it not so the world would be perfect: but it is so, and honestly one cannot say that any one hotel at Lourdes is better than another, only here again if one is compelled to stop for a night, one cannot do better than the best which is nominally the Angleterre. Avoid the hotels that have Holy names to them, they are usually frauds. If you go to Lourdes as a pilgrim, prefer the religious houses (which take in travellers). If the Angleterre is too dear for you, the Hotel de Toulouse is not to be despised; it should take you in at 25 to 35 francs a day. Argelès, up the valley, is a very different place, it is a little hurt by the neighbourhood of Lourdes, and by the stream of travellers who pour up and down its main road to Cauterets and to the sights of Gavarnie. Nevertheless it remains a French country town, and the fairly dignified capital of a district. The Hotel de France is excellent and, by the way (a thing always to be mentioned when one is speaking of hotels in the Pyrenees), it is ready at any time to furnish horses, and has, of course, a garage. At Luz stand two hotels facing each other on either side of the road, I cannot remember the names, or rather I cannot remember which is which, but anyhow take the one on the right of the road as you look up the valley, or as you come up from the station, that is, the one upon the western side. They are polite, and that makes all the difference in one’s relations with people whom one does not often meet.

Gavarnie, overrun as it is (and it is hideously overrun), has a very tolerable hotel, clean, and not too dear. The reason is that the people who come to the place usually go away on the same day, and that therefore there is some anxiety to please those who stop. Another inn, up under the mountain, is not so much to be recommended. Of Cauterets everything can be said—and much more—that was said of Eaux Bonnes, you are at the mercy of a place which the rich choose to have ruined, and apart from their vulgarity you will have that noise which accompanies them in all their doings, this sort of place in the Pyrenees is luckily not common, and when it is tolerable is tolerable in proportion as it is national. Cauterets is almost as international as Lourdes, and for anyone using the Pyrenees as I use them in this book, it would be madness to stop there. Bagnères-de-Bigorre is better, though it is something in the same line. It is better because it has something of a past and a history, and is, like Argelès, the chief town of its district. The Hotel de Paris is the best, but it is very expensive, and I believe, though I do not know, that the Hotel des Vignes in the Rue de Tarbes is good among the moderate places. But the rule holds here, as everywhere, that where rich people, especially cosmopolitans, colonials, nomads, and the rest, come into a little place, they destroy most things except the things that they themselves desire. And the things that they themselves desire are execrable to the rest of mankind.

Arreau, in the next valley, merits a more particular attention. It is thoroughly French, and here you will find side by side with the expensive places (for even Arreau has its Hotel d’Angleterre which, however, to tell the truth, is not ruinous) a most delightful little place called the Hotel du Midi, where sensible people go. I am speaking on the testimony of others, but on good testimony. It is a place smelt out by the infallible nose of the French professional class. It has a garage, and will tell you where to get carriages, though I believe it has nothing but an omnibus of its own. It is—or was—really cheap and good. But for some odd reason this excellent house charges you extra for your coffee.

Right high up this valley is Vielle where there is one hotel, the Hotel Mendielle, this is the one you must ask for if you find yourself caught here, and it is just the place at which one might be caught if one got into the wrong valley from a col in the Sobrarbe, or, if, in coming up the Gave, one had not made way enough by night; I know nothing for or against this hotel, and I believe it to be the only one. The little village of Aragnouet, which is at the very end of the road under the last precipices, has an inn of the quality of which I know nothing.

The next valley is that of Bagnères-de-Luchon. Now it might be imagined, seeing what rich places are in the way of hotels, that Bagnères-de-Luchon (being by far the richest place in the Pyrenees) would be hopelessly the worst, and that, as nothing good could be said about Cauterets, and as there was precious little choice in Eaux Bonnes, Luchon would be a place to despair of in the matter of hotels, but on the contrary it is a place to discuss.

Even if Luchon were as detestable as the Riviera, one would have to come to it because it is the knot and reservoir of all mountain travel. The valley strikes so deep into the hills, brings the railway so near their summits, and is so exactly situated at the “fault” spoken of so frequently in this book (the break in the Pyrenean line where the landscapes and peoples of the chain meet) that it is difficult not to pass through Luchon at one time or another during any length of days passed in these hills. Even if you make a vow to clear Luchon, you may find yourself caught in any one of twenty surrounding barbarisms with a bad foot or no money, and compelled to set a course for this harbour. Moreover Luchon is by no means the vulgar place its riches ought to make it. The fashion for it was first made by reasonable people, many Spaniards come and help to give the place its tone, and perhaps the very extremity of evil corrects itself, and Luchon, being so crammed with wealthy people, knows its own vices better than places just a little less rich, and it is therefore more tolerable. At any rate the problem of sleeping at Luchon is easily solved in July and August because all prices are pretty much the same, and you cannot depend upon the printed prices at all. For pension it is otherwise. There are fixed prices and they are not exorbitant for such a place. A very clean, decent, rich hotel is the Hotel d’Angleterre, where, if you stop some days, they will charge you, I believe, about 40 francs a day. There is a place for poorer people called the Hotel de l’Europe; all its prices are cheaper, but it has this drawback that you get nothing national. It is clean and there is a roof over your head, but you get neither French comfort nor French discomfort, and you are paying a little less for things a great deal worse, notably in the matter of food. The bold who fear nothing will go and stop at the village little inn called the Golden Lion, which is near the old church and existed before wealthy Luchon was born or thought of. Here the bold will consort with Muleteers and the populace in some discomfort. One of the best uses to which one can put Luchon is to eat in it, and for sleeping to go outside and camp in the woods: and the best place for the passer-by to eat is the Café Arnative on the main street; its cooking is very good indeed, and the wine really remarkable; it is such good wine that one wonders why they give it away, and every year as one returns to the place one fears it may have ceased, but it continues. Speak to the manager in English for he knows and loves that tongue, or in Spanish or in French. In the use of the hotels and restaurants of Luchon, however—always excepting the Golden Lion—remember that they are snobbish about clothes, and that even two days in the hills puts you well below the standard which they can tolerate. I confess that when I have had to use Luchon, I have depended upon clothes which were waiting for me at the station; and it is not difficult to use Luchon as a sort of half-way house in this matter, leading the right life in the western mountains, coming down to Luchon to find one’s luggage, dressing up, plunging into worldly pleasure at Luchon, sending one’s luggage off again to Ax or Perpignan, and then taking to the eastern hills for another bout of poverty.

In the Val d’Aran, next to the valley of Luchon, there is but one place where one is likely to stay, and that is in the town of Viella, which is the capital; for the Val d’Aran is a small place, and there is no advantage in stopping anywhere else. The Posada Deo is that which I know best and is good but of course Spanish; the cooking is a sort of mixture of Spanish and French, but the time you have to wait for it and in the manner in which it is given you is wholly Spanish. The wine also (oddly enough!) is Spanish. It ought, on the Garonne, to be of the Garonne, but the customs interfere.

The Catalan valley, south and east of the Val d’Aran, the valley of Esterri, has, in that town, a good little hotel, the Hotel Pepe. The people are thoroughly Catalan in their love of money and therefore you must bargain. Whatever you do, do not stop at any of the other places in the valley, it is even better to go through a storm than to risk Llavorsi, or worse still Escaló, but on the far side of the hill and of the port called St. John of the Elms there is a most delicious inn, with an old innkeeper of the very best, at Castellbo.

To return to the French side; if you go by train to St. Girons you may likely enough change at Boussens, the station has not (or had not) any buffet, but there was (and I hope is) an hotel opposite it where people travelling by train ate; the cooking here is the best in the whole of the Pyrenees, which is saying a good deal. At St. Girons itself there is not only good cooking, but the wine which Arthur Young admired, and which was well worthy of his admiration. Do not go to the best hotel (which is the hotel of the Princes and of the Alpine Club), but to the next cheapest which is called the Hotel de France; at least I have found this last to be excellent and cheaper for its quality of food and drink and repose than any other in all this chain. These things change quickly, what was true so short a time ago may not be true now; but so, at least, I found it.

In the valley of the Ariège it is always well to make Ax your sleeping-place, for Ax, though there are waters and though the baths make the prosperity of the place, is a very pleasant little town and the right beginning for the mountains, whether you are going by the main road into the Roussillon, or up the Ariège in the Carlitte group, or again over the main range into Andorra. At Ax there are two rival hotels, the Hotel de France, and the Hotel Sicre. The latter is a little cheaper though both are cheap, and while I know the second one best I should recommend the first; it will take you in as cheaply as any, and seems the more carefully kept; both have garages. The Hotel Sicre suffers somewhat from being directly attached to its Thermal Baths. If you are going to explore the wild country of the Upper Aston, you must start from Cabanes lower down on the railway. There is no need to sleep there. The valley above it has some of the best camping places in the Pyrenees. But it is worth knowing the name of the hotel, which is “Du Midi.” The whole place is, of course, quite small and cheap.

On the high road into Roussillon choose Porté, primitive as it is, and avoid _Hospitalet_ (on the hither side of the pass of Puymorens) like the plague. Hospitalet and the village just before it, Merens, are for some reason or other quite spoilt; I fancy tourists come up so far as these two without going over the pass which they find too much trouble, and that their coming and going has spoilt the two places: at any rate they are detestable. They overcharge you and treat you with contempt at the same time.

Porté, though it is but a few miles further on, is quite different. Here is one rude inn, as cheap as the grace of God, and kept by the most honest people in the world; Michet by name. It is thoroughly Spanish in character (for remember that Porté, though politically in France, is on the Spanish side of the main range, and that the pass just above is on the watershed); the animals live on the ground floor, the human beings just above them. You will never regret to have slept at Porté.

As you go on into the plain of the Cerdagne you will find a good inn at La Tour Carol: not exactly enthusiastic in their greeting of the traveller, but polite. It is quite a little place of only half a thousand inhabitants, and you cannot expect much from it, but it is better than Saillagousse where they are most unwilling.

Up the road to France from Saillagousse, at Mont Louis, is a hotel of which I can speak but little because my own experience of it was late on a holiday night when everything was very full, but it is substantial, it is cheap and I have heard it praised. It is called the Hotel de France, and it is a starting-point for the omnibus down to the rail-head at Villefranche in the valley above which rise the flanks of the Canigou.

On the Canigou itself, standing upon a platform a few hundred feet below the summit facing the Mediterranean and one of the greatest views in this world, there is now an inn which you must not despise though it does happen to be somewhat tourist. It is only open for the end of June, July, August, and September, though one can sleep there at other times of the year if one asks at Prades for the housekeeper; he comes down to that town through the winter and is known there.

In Perpignan (by the way) go to the chief hotel, for the hotels of that plain can be very vile when they try. This hotel is called “The Grand” and it stands on the quay of the smaller river just within the old fortifications. There is a delightful little restaurant in Perpignan called the Golden Lion, it is well to order what one wants some hours beforehand, and to take their own recommendation about wine. Perpignan is so twirled and knotted a town that I can give no directions for finding that Golden Lion, where it lies in its little back alley called the Rue des Cardeurs, save to tell you that it is but 200 yards from your hotel, and that the Rue des Cardeurs is the second on the _left_ as you walk away from the main front of the cathedral; or again, the _first_ on the left after you have crossed the Place Gambetta. Anyhow, Perpignan is a small place and anyone will show you where this eating-house is, and it is a good one. Down the Cerdagne in Spain, at Seo de Urgel, there are two or three hotels, and one of the second class called the Posada Universal or Universal Inn which merits its name; you will do well to stop there for it has a pleasant balcony overlooking the valley, with vines trained about it; and the people look after you.

As to the inns of Andorra your best plan is to stop in the capital, that is, in _Andorra The Old_ itself, where the Posada is called the Posada _Calounes_, and is quite a little and simple place. The entry into Andorra, however, is not always easy. If you make it from the north, mist may delay you, even on the grassy Embalire Pass, and may keep you for hours on the higher crossings of the range, even when it does not defeat you altogether. You may therefore have no choice but to stop at one of the little villages; but it is a poor fate, for they are full of bugs and fleas and appalling cooking, though the people are kindly enough. The inn at Encamps is the only one with which I am myself acquainted among these smaller places; there also it is vile.