Chapter VII: Preface: To the Fourth Edition (5)

The motorist must decide whether to make Argelès his stopping-place or not. In distance from Bagnères he will have gone no more than somewhat over 70 miles, and that is a short day; but it is a day that will have included a great deal of climbing and of sharp descents, and that will have had at the end of it one of the highest passes in the Pyrenees. If he does not choose to stop at Argelès, he will find in Eaux Bonnes above the Val d’Ossau, rather more than 20 miles on (but over a high pass), a very wealthy little modern town, like Bagnères on a lesser scale, with everything that he or his machine can want; and only an hour or an hour and a half beyond Eaux Bonnes, by one of the great national roads and along the lowlands, is Pau.

This cross road from Argelès and the valley of Lourdes, into the Val d’Ossau runs as follows. You take at Argelès the road for Aucun, a village about 5 miles off, up a lateral valley, during which 5 miles you climb over 1200 feet.

From Aucun, still climbing, the road passes Marsous, winds up the hill-side away from the stream, and reaches the first pass, the Col de Soulor, thence it makes round the head waters of the Ouzan valley and round the flank of a bare hill called in that country-side “Mount Ugly,” until it reaches the point called the Col de Casteix. Here the foot passenger would naturally cross, as he might have crossed still lower down by the Col de Cortes, but for the sake of a gradient the road goes right round to the north and over the Col d’Aubisque, falling from thence in very long curves down to Eaux Bonnes. The town is not 2½ miles from the top of the col in a straight line. It is more than 5 by the long zigzags of the road.

From Eaux Bonnes a road of less than 3 miles takes one down the Pyrenees to Laruns in the valley, and here the great lateral road of the high Pyrenees may be said to end.

One may go to Pau the same night, but, sleeping at Eaux Bonnes, it is a most interesting journey to continue down the valley of the Gave d’Ossau to Arudy and to Oloron, thence by the road through Aramits, and Tardets to Mauléon, thence by Musculdy, Larceveau, and Lacarre to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, but all that run is through the foot hills, and though one has fine views of the range from every little pass and hilltop, these last 80 or 100 miles are not of the same nature as the track I have just been describing, the chief feature of which is the presence of a good carriageway running through the very core of high and abrupt mountains. Still, anyone who has taken the lower road, as I have advised, from Bayonne to Perpignan and wishes to go back all the way to Bayonne by a higher road nearer the mountains, cannot do better than go on from Eaux Bonnes to Laruns, to Oloron, Mauléon, St. Jean Pied-de-Port, and thence down the lovely valley of the Nive to Bayonne.

So far I have described the main circular journey, west to east, and from east back again to west, which one can take in a motor car in the French Pyrenees.

To describe or to advise as to a similar journey from north to south is not so easy, because the Spanish roads are uncertain. Moreover, there is no Spanish road crossing the lateral ranges as the French one does, so that, unless one abandons the Pyrenees altogether and goes right down into the plains, a circular journey from north to south and back north again is confined to the very narrow choice between Roncesvalles, the Somport, and the new Sallent road.

The road over the Somport is the best international road between France and Spain. It is completely finished, and yet it is sufficiently modern to present every advantage for travel. On the French side it has been complete since the time of Napoleon III; on the Spanish side its highest stretches have been finished only in recent years. It is perfectly possible to take the whole road from Oloron to Jaca, and so back by Sallent and Laruns to Oloron again in one day, but it would be a foolish thing to do, and if the ascents try the machine, it might mean going through some of the best scenery of the Val d’Ossau in the dark. It is best therefore to break the journey at Jaca, and no number of hours spent in that delightful town are wasted. The first part of the road—the first 16 miles or so—are nearly level. It is interesting to see the straight line which the Roman track makes for the gate of the hills at Asasp. The pass seems to invite the road: it is the most obvious gap in the whole Chain.

The rise, as I have said, is slight. The river, which is rather less than 800 feet above the sea at Oloron, is not 1400 above it at Bédous; in the whole 20 miles or so, you rise but 600 feet. There are occasional hills, but they are insignificant, and the general impression is that of following the floor of the valley. When, however, one has passed through the great enclosed plain of Bédous, and left behind him its chief town, Accous, one passes through a narrow gorge, which rises continually to Urdos about 12 miles on. The rise is gradual, however, and never steep. It was at Urdos that the old valley road used to stop, until Napoleon III continued it to the summit of the pass, and for 7 miles above Urdos there are continual and steep rises. The pass, however, is low (it is but slightly over 5000 feet) and the last 2 miles before the summit are fairly flat. From the summit the road runs down on the Spanish side a little steeply, but with no really difficult gradient, and after about 2 miles of this, where the Canal Roya falls in and forms the river Aragon, the road takes on quite an easy slope. Indeed, the escarpment is so much steeper upon the French side that Jaca, though it is 25 miles away, stands no lower than Urdos close by just over the ridge. Rather less than half-way between the summit and Jaca is the little town of Canfranc. It would be a pity to stop there, the food is doubtful, and so is the wine, and if one wants to breakfast on the journey, it is better to make an early breakfast at Urdos.

After Canfranc the mountains open out and you are fairly in the lowlands; 17 miles on, through a wide valley, you come to Jaca.

Your hotel at Jaca will be the Hotel Mur, as good and comfortable a one as you will find in northern Spain. From Jaca you may go on to Pamplona westward, or down further south into Spain by Saragossa. As you enter the northern gate of Jaca, you will have gone exactly 57 miles from Oloron; a short distance I know, but I repeat, it is foolish to go to Jaca and not to spend your time in so charming a place. Moreover, the run back has no opportunities for repose.

The return journey is first eastward by the Guasa road, which has (or had, when I went along it last), a most indifferent surface in parts, and you follow this, with a railway never far from the road, some 10 or 12 miles, until at Sabiñanigo the railway turns down south and in much the same neighbourhood (but north of the line) the road turns up north and reaches Biescas (a smaller town than Jaca), in about another 8 miles. After that it begins to climb. At Sandinies the road bifurcates. That on the right goes up to Panticosa; crossing the river by the stone bridge of Escar, your road goes straight on up the valley and climbs up to Sallent for 3 or 4 miles.

I confess I have never been over this bit, but I am assured that it is practicable for a motor, and I have indeed seen a motor which had come round from Panticosa. There is nothing at Sallent that you can call habitable, though as motors live there it is to be presumed that there are ways of looking after them. You will do well to volunteer at the guard room (which is on the left of the road as you leave the town) information as to your whereabouts. It has happened to me not to be allowed to leave a Spanish town without all manner of formalities, while on other occasions it has happened to me to walk through one and over into France without a question being asked.

From Sallent the new road goes up with rather steep gradients at first, zigzagging up the side of the Peña Forata. The old road, a mere track, may be seen cutting off the great bends as one climbs the mountain. About a mile from the frontier, where the steepness of the road grows level, is a post of police where they may or may not bother you; they bothered me on one occasion, and on another they let me alone. From the summit, which is some 12 kilometres and more—say 8 miles by road—from the town of Sallent one goes down first gently, then steeply, with the Pic-du-Midi d’Ossau, a vast isolated rock, right in front of one, and one is accompanied by a torrent upon one’s left—which is the Gave d’Ossau. The road follows the right bank of this for some 7 miles, crosses over to the left bank, and 3 miles after this bridge reaches Gabas, a tiny hamlet, where is one of the most delightful hotels in the Pyrenees. Gabas is the highest inhabited point in this valley, and is just the same distance from the summit that Sallent is upon the other side, that is, between 8 and 9 miles. From Gabas down to Laruns the road continues all the way downhill, a matter of another 7 or 8 miles, and from Laruns back to Oloron, through Buzy, is a lowland road with a flat surface. The whole round from Oloron back to Oloron again is somewhere between 125 and 150 miles.

There is but one other circular journey for which I can vouch that it can be made in a motor car; it is the journey from Bayonne to Pamplona, by way of the low passes on the Atlantic side of the range, and back again through Roncesvalles.

You find yourself at Bayonne as a starting-place. The main road into Spain and towards Madrid goes along the sea, much as the railway does, and bears westward, but there is another road through the tangle of Basque mountains, or rather those hills which between them make up French and Spanish Navarre, and this road is the direct road to Pamplona. It is a short day’s journey of some 60 miles at the most when all the windings are taken into account, and there are no really high passes or steep gradients throughout. You leave Bayonne by the main straight road which leads out south-west towards Biarritz, but, immediately outside the fortifications, you turn to the left along the high land above the valley of the Nive. A mile and a half out you cross over the main line and immediately afterwards take the road to the left which leads you to Arcangues. There are many branch roads on this little bit, which is well under 4 miles, but the chief road is plain. At Arcangues, just after you have left the church on the right, you turn to the left, still following the high road, and in some 2 miles you strike the forest of Ustaritz, the confines of which were for so many centuries the sacred centre of the Basque people. Through this forest there is no doubt of the way. The road leading to the town of Ustaritz, which goes off to the left in the midst of the forest, comes in at so sharp an angle that one would not be tempted to take it, and the high road goes on, without any bifurcations, to St. Pée. You have, by this time, crossed the low watershed between the basin of the Adour and that of the Nivelle, upon which river St. Pée stands at some 13 or 14 miles from Bayonne.

You turn to the left in St. Pée by the road that leaves that village due south, and take the left-hand road again at the first bifurcation, which is immediately outside the village; then follow steadily up the valley of the river. There is but one doubtful place, not 3 miles out of St. Pée, where you choose the left of two roads, but even that is not really doubtful, for your road obviously follows the stream, which it there crosses by a bridge, while the right-hand road goes over into the hills. About 3 miles more from this bifurcation you cross the frontier, and thence onwards there is no doubt of your way. The high road goes over the Pass of Ostondo, or Maya, quite low, and brings you into the Basque valley of Baztan. Come on down through Elizondo, a most delightful town of this people, and climb up continually thence (taking the left-hand road at Irurita, one and a half miles from Elizondo) until you come to yet another pass, called the “Port La Betal” or “Vetale” in French, some 2000 feet or more in height. After crossing this col you are in the basin of the Ebro, and the road thence into Pamplona is a straight stretch all the way to the plain, which appears suddenly spread out as you round a corner, a fine sight.

The old road back from Pamplona into France over Roncesvalles, the road which the armies of Charlemagne took, and which the Romans built, went first east and west, and was the first portion of the great road to Saragossa. It met the road over the mountains and branched north towards Roncesvalles. There is a modern road which cuts off this corner, and joins the Roncesvalles road quite close to the hills. It crosses three low lateral ranges by very easy gradients, and has an excellent surface. It takes one through Larrasoaña, Erro, and finally, without any doubtful cross roads or turnings, falls into the old Roman road, just below Burguete.

Here you must make ready for one of the greatest sights in Europe. You are on a very high upland plain, something like the glacis of a fortification. The last crest of the Pyrenees stands like a long wall of white cliffs, which seems low and familiar, because you are so very high up on this sloping plain. You go through a fine northern-looking wood which might be in England, with great spacious clumps of beeches and broad glades. You pass the monastery, and then go up through the hamlet of Roncesvalles, quite an insignificant few hundred feet of road; you see a ruined chapel upon your right (ruined quite recently by fire, and yet no one has taken the trouble to rebuild it!), then suddenly you are at the summit, and a profound trench opens sheer below you and points straight to the French plains, miles and miles away.

It is here that Roland died, in the valley below.

From this summit the roads run down directly on the northern side of the watershed, but still politically in Spain, till you come to the last Spanish town, Val Carlos, where you will do well to ask for papers permitting you to leave the country. These papers are obtained from the Corregidor. Two miles on you cross the river into France, and four miles further you are in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, where there is good food and promptitude and news and all that is necessary to man.

From St. Jean Pied-de-Port the main valley road takes you, without any doubtful turnings, down the river and the railway, now on one side, now on the other, all the way to Bayonne. There is but one place where the traveller might be a little confused, and that is some 12 miles or more from St. Jean Pied-de-Port, where the road, which has been running right along the railway and the river for miles, turns sharp over to the right to reach a village called Louhossoa; but this village (which is but a mile from the river) once reached, everything is plain again. Turn to the left at the church, where the road goes straight back to the river (a matter of 2 miles), crosses it, and goes along the heights on the left bank, all the way back to Bayonne.

The whole of this circle is about equivalent in distance to that which I have described round from Oloron to Jaca, and back again round by Sallent; and, as in the former case, you will do well to break the journey in Spanish territory and at Pamplona, for though this makes two short days in a motor, they are days in which you ought to see what you can see. For my part also, I would stop at Elizondo, to eat and to watch the place; but I would not eat at the hotel in the main street, where the people are cruel and grasping, but rather at the cheap and genial place kept by one Jarégui.

Besides these two circular journeys upon good roads, which a man can take across the main range, there is the variation of them that can be made by taking the valley road from Pamplona to Jaca, a journey of at least 70 miles or more. I know that it can be done, for I have seen motors that had done it, and for all that I know the road may even be excellent: or it may be very bad—I am not acquainted with it. Such as it is, it takes you all along Aragon and the parallel outer ranges of the Spanish Pyrenees.

I have mentioned another extension to the roads described, the run down to Saragossa from Jaca. This of course takes you right out of the Pyrenean country, but the first half of it at least is in the hills, and no journey shows you better the nature of the outlier mountains on the Spanish slope of the main range. Off the direct road one may make a long elbow eastward to reach Huesca, which was St. Laurence’s town. The surface is good, and there are few steep gradients, though there is a long climb out of Jaca itself. From Jaca to Saragossa, by way of Huesca, along this road, is just about 100 miles, and, as far as Huesca at least, it provides a complete knowledge of the mountain types upon the Spanish side of the watershed. Nor is this typical scenery anywhere finer than in the splendid gorges and chimney-rocks of Riglos, nor is any one of the parallel ranges more characteristic than the high Sierra de Guara, which stands up above the burnt plain of Huesca, 30 miles out from the main ridge, quite separate from the general range, and yet reaching a summit of nearly 6000 feet.

All the roads suitable for motoring, especially in such a district as this, are suitable for bicycling also. I say “especially in such a district as this,” because the identity between motoring and bicycling roads is more striking in the Pyrenees than in most parts of France, since the expense and difficulty of making the great highways here has been such that it was not worth while building a carriage road on these hills unless the engineering was to be of the most perfect kind, and the surface of the best, and the gradients as easy as nature would allow. The consequence is that there are in the Pyrenees no roads (which he will find in the plains) where a man on a bicycle can go with difficulty, and a motor cannot go at all. Stretches of this kind, due to bad surface or to steepness, are familiar to every one, but I can remember none of the sort, not even of a few miles, between St. Jean Pied-de-Port and Puigcerdá, nor between the French plains and the Spanish.

The question will, however, be asked by anyone who proposes to bicycle in this district for the first time, whether the long gradients are not such as to destroy the advantage of using the greater part of the roads. To this objection a general rule applies, one which will seem a little unusual when it is first read, but which I have found from experience to be true. It is this, that the few crossings of the hills from north to south make easier journeys for the bicyclist than do the lateral roads across the ribs or buttresses of the main chain. Anyone going for instance on a bicycle from Laruns to Lourdes, will have some very fine scenery for his pains, and, if the day is fine, he will not regret his experience, but he should be warned that on this lateral road most of his energy will be taken up in slowly climbing the great pass over the Mont Laid; for though it is but a few miles as the crow flies, it is a big and toilsome business along the highway. Nor would that be the only pass. It is characteristic of these lateral roads that they usually contain more than one big ascent. He will be troubled again at the Col-de-Soulor and to get from Laruns to Lourdes, though the two towns are in contiguous valleys and no further apart than London and Windsor, would be a day’s work for most men.

Another example of the same sort could be given from the other lateral roads of the Pyrenees, as, for instance, the low cross road between St. Jean Pied-de-Port and the valley of Mauléon. Here the pass is much less high, but a mile or two from St. Jean, when you have gone through St. Jean-le-Vieux, you begin to climb, and all the long way of the valley of the Bidouze, and out again, over the next range, that overlooks the Saison, is a succession of long wheelings uphill.

For the purpose of seeing some particular place in the next valley, it may be worth while to follow one of these lateral roads, but a general tour of that sort is not worth while. If, on the contrary, a bicyclist chooses the main north and south roads, he will find many advantages in the choice, and I would recommend in particular, as the best that he can undertake in these mountains, the round from Oloron to Jaca and back, which I have already described. Such a journey is a task taking three full days, four or five easy days, and it gives such an opportunity of contrasting two civilizations, and of learning the barrier which separates them, as does not offer itself in so short a space anywhere else, I think, in western Europe. I will not detain the reader in this particular with what I have to say upon this road in general, for that will rather concern the description I will make of it when I speak of travel on foot, but I will point out in what way it can be dealt with by the bicyclist.

All the long road from Oloron to Bédous, though it leads to the very heart of the mountains, needs no more energy upon a bicycle than does a two-hours’ ride (and it ought not to take two hours) in any part of the plains. There are one or two half-miles of hill, all of them rideable, but the general run of the way is flat, or burdened with a slight rise which is hardly perceived, and the approach to Bédous, in its magic circle of hills, is actually _down_ along a fine slope, which faces the last ridge and the frontier watershed. So far, it is a ride which one may take even upon a high gear, and have for his pains as fine a survey of great mountains as he will find in Europe. From Bédous the road cuts straight across the dead level of the valley floor for 2½ miles, passes a “gate” of rock, and thence continually runs through gorges up the 7 miles to Urdos. It rises considerably in this last bit—nearly 1 in 20—and though the distance from Oloron to Urdos may not take one more than one afternoon, anyone bicycling into Spain will do well to pass the night at Urdos, for the big climb begins just after that place. In this hamlet, of no pretensions, you may choose with advantage the little inn called the “Hotel of the Travellers,” of which, and whose charming terrace, I speak in another place.

Next day, unless you wish to accomplish a feat, you will begin to walk up to the summit of the road. There are parts that can be ridden—the last quarter is almost flat—but the earlier part and the larger is too steep for comfort. The continental road-book makes the whole distance 12 miles, the kilometres by the roadside, which are somewhat more reliable, make it 8, and so does the map; anyhow it is a continuous uphill which should be taken leisurely, pushing one’s machine until one gets to the flat bit at the top. The short cuts are here, unlike those of some other cols, quite impossible to a bicycle, even when one is pushing it, and the whole way must be taken upon the high road; if one can afford it, it is wise to have the machine carried on a cart as far as the hospital, 2 miles from the obelisk which marks the frontier and the summit of the pass; but whether one pushes it, or whether one has it carried, it is a three-hours’ climb. It is wisest to take these three hours in the early morning.

From the summit at the entry into Spain there is 2 miles of steep new zigzag, falling a little too sharply, and all around is the very novel aspect of the southern side of the range, where the dryness and the sun have eaten up the forest; at the foot of this zigzag begins an easy and continual run down of 7 or 8 miles into Canfranc; your bicycle takes its own way; there is no place so steep as to fatigue one with the break, still less to be of any danger. The 17 miles from Canfranc onwards towards Jaca is a road upon the whole descending, but by that time one has entered the foot hills, which are flat and undulating rather than mountainous, and at Jaca you will find the Hotel Mur, which I have called the kindest little hotel in Europe, and certainly one of the cleanest in Spain.

You will leave Jaca early after spending there your second night. I am not saying that the whole distance from Oloron could not be done in a day, on the contrary, it could be done quite easily. A man could pass the night at Oloron, starting in the early morning from that town, be at Urdos easily by ten, lunch there at leisure, get to the summit by four, and be down at Jaca before dark on a July day, and before the hour of the late Spanish meal. But the climbing of the pass would fatigue him, it would come at an awkward time of the day, and he would have to count upon what is not so certain in the Pyrenees, fine weather. It is best to break the journey at Urdos as I have advised.

From Jaca, a great road leads all the way down to Saragossa, throughout scenery where you are at first amazed by the contours of the isolated cliffs above the gorges of the Gallego, and afterwards almost equally amazed by the aridity of the great plain that slopes down to the Ebro. The run from Jaca to Saragossa is too much for one day in the hot season. It had best be broken at Huesca. If he choose to make this excursion, the traveller will have to return by the same road, and he would perhaps be wise to save himself the tedium of it and to put his machine upon the train, for a railway goes back, much as the road does, to Jaca.

If one does not take the excursion to Saragossa but returns to France, the way is by Biescas, Sallent, and the Val d’Ossau.

The Biescas road leaves Jaca to the east and runs so for 10 miles, then it goes 8 miles northward to Biescas.

From Biescas it begins to rise, in the last part heavily; and Sallent, which is not 10 miles from Biescas as the crow flies, is nearly 1500 feet higher. The gorge of approach to Sallent is a plain embranchment from the Panticosa road at Sandinies about 8 miles from Biescas.

Sallent offers a problem to the bicyclist which it does not offer to the man with the motor, and that is the problem of lodging. It is a bad place to stop at, and yet the next place where one can sleep is over the pass, 17 miles on at Gabas. One will have gone nearly 40 miles from Jaca, and the last bit one will have been climbing all the way; for some miles up to Sallent quite steeply, and more or less uphill all the way from Biescas. To push the machine up another 8 miles to the summit (for it cannot be ridden) is a task, but it is a task worth accomplishing, especially if you have a long evening before you, for once on the summit you will have not only a run down of 8 or 9 miles to Gabas without putting your foot to the pedal, but also the prospect of the best inn in the Pyrenees, the delightful inn which the Bayous who own it call the Hotel des Pyrenees; or, if you like to take the whole pass at once, you have nearly 20 clear miles downhill without stopping, past Gabas to Laruns; but the inn at Laruns is not to be compared with the inn at Gabas.

If one takes on a bicycle the round which I have spoken of for a motor from Bayonne to Pamplona by the valley of the Baztan and back again by Roncesvalles, there is no difficulty about inns, but on the other hand there is a multitude of shorter hills, some of which cannot be ridden. You could make two short days of the journey out by sleeping at Elizondo, in which case on your first day you climb up a pass and down into a valley, and your second day is a repetition of the same process. The third day back from Pamplona to France has one hill at Erro, which you will hardly be able to climb, but from that valley through Burguete and right on to the top of the pass is rideable on any reasonable gear. From the summit down to Val Carlos all the way to the frontier is one long easy run down, and you may continue the valley road along the Nive as far as you like upon the same day. Even Bayonne is not too far at a stretch.

As for those who wish to know how to get a series of long coasts in these hills at the least pains, my advice to them is this: start from Perpignan, take the train from Perpignan to Mont Louis. From Mont Louis you have a run of 15 miles, falling 1000 feet all through the French Cerdagne to Bourg Madame, uninterrupted save for two or three short rises. At Bourg Madame next day an omnibus (with a very bad-tempered driver—at least he was so in my day) will take you up the Val Carol to the summit of the Puymorens; from there it is an uninterrupted coast all the way down the valley of the Ariège to Ax, and beyond as far as you like to go, 20 or 30 miles of downhill with scarcely an interruption.

The other way round is good coasting too. By the rail to Ax, up the Puymorens by coach, coast down Val Carol, _ride_ up (through Llivia) to Mont Louis and coast down the gorges of the Tet. It is only in this eastern part of the range that you will get such long uninterrupted downhills: there is, in the central part, the run down from the Pourtalet (but no coach to take you up), and there is a coach up the Val d’Aran to Viella, with a run back of a few miles down the Garonne; but neither of these are like the Ariège valley or that of the Tet, and the roads up the enclosed western valleys to Luz, Bagnères, etc., have not sufficient fall for long coasting.

One ought not to leave the road system of the Pyrenees without saying something on driving. Your best town, I think, for beginning a drive is Oloron, and there is a job-master close to the station from whom you can get horses and carriages by the day, by the week, or by the month. I do not speak of this from my own experience but from what I have been told, and I know that there are relays of horses all up the pass; but whether the job-master has arrangements for relays I do not know. That sensible kind of travel has so generally died out that I should think it doubtful. It is better to depend upon the same horses for the whole journey, and whether upon the round by Navarre or that by Jaca the posthouses are frequent everywhere, your longest stretches without one being the bit of new road, 17 miles long, between Sallent and Gabas, and the similar 14 or 16 miles between Urdos and Canfranc.

On the other roads, should you determine to drive along them, there is one rather long piece without a relay up the Tourmalet, between the eastern foot of that pass and Barèges; but this road is continually traversed by carriages at all times, and there is sufficient provision for the distance. These three are the only long gaps without relays which you have to fear in driving through the Pyrenees. For the rest, except that your days’ journeys must be so much shorter, what I have said of the roads for motoring applies to driving also.

V

TRAVEL ON FOOT IN THE PYRENEES

The road system of the Pyrenees and the opportunities it affords for motoring, bicycling, and driving are but a small part of what most English readers desire to know about travel in these mountains. For most men the pleasure of such travel is to be found in wandering upon foot from place to place, in learning a district by slow daily experience, in camping, and in the chance adventures that attach to this kind of life, and also in climbing. Of climbing I can write nothing; it is an amusement or a gamble that I have had no opportunity of enjoying. Those who think of mountains in this way can learn all they need in Mr. Spender’s book, “The High Pyrenees.” They can get more detailed knowledge from Packe—if a copy of the book is still to be bought—and I am told by those who understand such matters that the rock climbing of this range is among the best and the most varied in Europe. In the matter of travel upon foot other than climbing, I have some considerable experience, and this is the sort of travel which I shall presuppose when I come to speak of the various districts into which travel in the Pyrenees may be divided.

There are two ways in which travel on foot in these hills can be enjoyed; the first is by laying down some long line of travel—as over the Somport, across from the Aragon to the Gallego, and so through Sobrarbe to Venasque—the second is by fixing upon a comparatively small district in which one can slowly shift one’s camp from one day to another. In either case, the aspect of travel on foot is much the same, and so are its difficulties and its necessities.

I have heard it discussed whether a man should travel with a mule in these hills. The practice has in its favour the fact that the mountaineers, whenever they have a pack to carry and some distance to go, travel with a beast of burden. The mule goes wherever a man can go, short of sheer climbing, and it will carry provisions for some days. The expense is not heavy; a mule is saleable anywhere in these mountains; one can buy it at the beginning of a holiday and sell it at the end of one, never at a great loss, sometimes at a profit. Nevertheless, upon the whole, the mule is to be avoided. You are somewhat tied by the beast. He is not always reasonable, and feeding him, though it will be easy two days out of three, is sometimes difficult, for while he will carry many days of your provisions, he can carry but few rations of his own. With a mule one always finds one’s self trying to make an inn, and that preoccupation is a great drawback to travel in the mountains. Moreover, the keep of a mule, at a Spanish inn especially, is expensive. It is a better plan to hire a mule occasionally, as one needs repose, or in order to carry any considerable weight for a short distance over some high pass.

I presuppose therefore a traveller upon foot carrying his own pack, and I will now lay down certain rules which my experience has taught me to apply to this kind of excursion.

I shall speak later of what sort of kit one should carry, what amount of provision, etc.; and I shall also speak later of the nature of camping in these hills; but these two main things do not cover the whole business, and the more you know of the Pyrenees, the more you will find them enemies unless you observe the laws which they teach you in the matter of exploring them.

Now, the first and the most essential of these laws to regulate your travel is to make certain of no one distance in any one time. Do not say to yourself “I will leave Cabanes” (for instance) “and will sleep the night in Serrat.” Such plans are too easily made at home or on the plains. One measures the distance upon the map, and the thing seems simple enough. One may be lured into security by starting in fine weather or over easy ground, but _unless you have been over the place before_, never make a plan of this kind, and even if you know the territory, beware of the false confidence which comes so easily in the plains, when one has forgotten the terrors of the high places.

Here are two examples within my own experience to show what dangers attend this sort of confidence, the first taken from the Aston, the next from that very easy place, the Canal Roya; and remember that nothing I am saying has to do with the fantastic exercise of climbing, but only with straightforward walking and scrambling.

A companion and I had settled to force in 36 hours the passage from the Aston valley into Andorra. There is a path marked upon the map; the way is apparently quite clear and one might have made sure that with provision and calculation for one night, nothing could prevent one’s reaching the first houses of the Andorrans. On the contrary, this is what happened.

The first evening was mild and beautiful, the sky was clear, the path at first plain. It was so plain that we did not hesitate to continue it after dark. Here was a first mistake, and the breach of a rule I shall insist upon when we come to camping. Still, it was not this error which destroyed us.

We slept the few hours of darkness under a thorn bush before a most indifferent fire, and the next morning we began our way.

We came almost immediately after sunrise to a place where the valley bifurcated, and that in so confused a manner, with so many interlacing streams and so unpronounced a ridge between the main bodies of water, that we took the wrong ascent by the wrong stream, and only found, when we had ended in a precipitous cul-de-sac, that we had made an error. We went back to the bifurcation (which, remember, was of that confused sort where nothing but a very large scale map is of any use), and we made up the other stream. The hours which we had lost had brought us into the heat of the day, and the day was exceptionally hot. We climbed a shelving slope at the end of this further valley: a matter of 2000 feet, very steep and rough. When we were already near the summit there bowled over towards us from beyond it, without the least warning, a violent storm. We were so close to the top, and there was so little shelter on the open rocks we were ascending, that we thought it well to gain the summit before halting. On the whole the decision was wise. We found overhanging ledges upon the summit and took refuge there until the worst of the downpour had ceased. But the storm left behind it a mass of drifting cloud, now rising and now lifting, which made it quite impossible to determine what our true way should be. The summit of the slope was an open grass saddle with great boulders dotted about, and from this saddle a man might go down one of three declivities which branched southward from it. There was no seeing any complete view of the valleys below even in the intervals of the drooping clouds, for, as is so frequently the case in these steep hills, there was a great deal of “dead ground” just below us. We had to guess which of the undulations of the summit we should follow, we could not be certain until we had gone down some hundreds of feet that we had definitely entered an enclosed valley, but once on the floor of this we were fairly certain by our general direction that we had crossed the main watershed and were in Spain. The storm renewed itself; the late hour made us anxious, we pushed on through the driving mist and rain, necessarily losing a consistent view of the contours and the windings of the valley; when the sky cleared again we saw before us a great open gulf stretching down for miles and miles, and the very amplitude of the prospect further deceived us into believing that we were certainly descending into the first of the Spanish open places, but hour after hour went past and no sign of men appeared. There were not even any huts in the Jasses. To confuse us still further and to lead us on in our error, a definite path suddenly appeared; we naturally made certain that it was the head of the valley road upon the Spanish side. So confident were we that we _must_ by the map and by all common sense be now close to habitations that, after consulting together a little, we thought it wiser to eat what little provisions remained so as to gather strength for a last effort, than to camp hungry and reserve our food for the morrow. When we had so eaten it grew dark; hour after hour of the night passed, and the path was still plain—but there was no sign of men. By midnight we were dangerously exhausted and incapable of pushing further: we lay down where we were by the side of a stream and slept. The morning of the third day we might well enough have failed to reach succour. We had come to the end of our powers, we had no more food and it was only the accidental encounter with a fisherman who happened to be thus far up in the hills that guided us to safety. He told us that by choosing that particular one of the three slopes we had come down, not upon the Spanish side, but into a long curving valley that had led us back again into French territory. We had made a circle in those forty-eight hours of strain and certainly had we not found him our getting home at all would have been doubtful.

Now these errors, for which there seems very little excuse when they are set down thus in print, were not only natural, but as it were, necessary. Anyone unacquainted with the district _might_ have made them, and under our circumstances _would_ inevitably have made them. Nothing but a large scale map—which does not exist—would have saved us the hours lost at the bifurcation of the streams, and not even a large scale map could have properly decided us at the confused summit of the pass where a full view, which the storm had prevented, was necessary to judging one’s direction. The true remedy lay not in maps, however perfect, but in allowing for the chances of error, in taking a full three days’ provision, and in avoiding that sort of forced marching which had exhausted us, and which we had only undertaken from fears about our remaining stock of food.

The other matter, that of the Canal Roya, is the more significant in that it was quite a little detail that might have betrayed us into a very nasty situation. I knew the Canal Roya, and acting on the strength of that knowledge, my companion and I decided late one summer evening not to camp in the valley but to push on over the pass at the head of it, for immediately beyond this pass we knew to lie the good new modern high road which leads down to Sallent. The pass was marked on the map in the clearest possible fashion, the valley was of a very particular and decisive shape, and the pass lay straight over the end of it. Now at that end was a sweep of high land, and rising up from it two rocky peaks. The map and the general trend of the land made it certain that the pass would go to the right or to the left of the lowest of these two rocky peaks. There was no difficulty of approach, and one unacquainted with the Pyrenees might have thought that it mattered little which side of the peak one took, but we both knew enough about the mountains to be sure that there was one way and only one way across; smooth and easy as the approach appeared from our side, all the chances were that somewhere upon the other side there would be precipices. The sun was getting low, and the path which we had been following was suddenly obliterated under a new-fallen mass of scree. Neither of us can to-day ascribe what we did to anything but luck. We looked at the peak carefully and determined that a certain little notch upon the _right_ of it, was the port. We were fatigued after nearly 20 miles of walking (which had already included one Col) and we wearily began the last ascent. It so happened that as we painfully toiled up over and round the loose boulders, the surface to the _left_ of the peak became more and more inviting. Our doubts as we surveyed it were like the conflict which goes on in daily life between instinct and reason. Every bit of thought out reasoning put the port at the little notch on the _right_, but every temptation which could assail two tired men, made us hope and wish against reason that it lay over the smooth grass to the _left_; at last in a cowardly and (as it turned out) salutary moment, we broke for the grass. We tried to persuade ourselves that if that smooth round sward was a cheat, and betrayed (as such enticements often betray in the Pyrenees) nasty limestone cliffs on the further side we still had daylight and strength enough to come down again and to go up to the rugged notch to which reason and duty pointed. We reached the grass and there found two things, first, the path which had been lost on the stones and the scree suddenly reappeared _there_, and secondly, the descent on the further side towards Sallent was as easy as walking down an English hill.

The reason of this apparent error in the map we soon discovered. Out of sight, beyond the Col, was yet another rocky mass, to the left. The scale of the map was not sufficient to indicate every mass of rock, upon this ridge, but the map, as a fact, did indicate this peak which had been hidden from the valley and was unable specially to indicate the other peak which had been more prominent to us as we walked up from below. The adventure ended well for we got on to the main road before dark and to Sallent before nine, having covered in that accidentally successful day close upon 30 miles. But it might have ended, and should in reason have ended, very differently. For when we looked at the Sallent side of the range the next morning we saw that this notch on which we had first directed ourselves would have led to a perfectly impossible fall of rocks upon the further side. It would have been equally impossible to have gone back in the dark. We should have spent the night on a high stony ledge, without a fire and without shelter and without food, and the next day we should have had no choice but to come down again into the Canal Roya, utterly exhausted, certainly without the strength to climb up again by way of experiment upon other issues, but bound to make our way, if we could, to Canfranc, miles away down the Aragon Valley. It is not certain that we should have had the strength to do this. These examples and many more that one might give, prove the inadvisability of any plan that does not allow for a wide margin of delay: and, as I have said, a margin of three days is not too ample.

Not only a misjudgment of topography, to which these hills particularly lend themselves, may put one into a hole of this sort, but mist may do it, or worse still, a sprained ankle. Or one may find oneself cut off by marshy ground, or 20 or 30 feet of sheer cliff, too small for the map to mark, may take one an hour out of one’s way. In general, allow three days’ provision for any task, and never plan single days in the Pyrenees unless you are following a high road.

A second rule is to take the first part of the day slowly and yet without halting. It is the morning usually that gives you your best chance upon the heights, and such examples of mist as have endangered any of my excursions have fallen usually from mid-day onwards. Apart from the danger of mist, if you break the back of the day by ten or eleven, before the first meal, you are safe for the end of it; and breaking the back of the day usually means getting over a port.

A third rule is, stick to the _path_, and if the path seems lost, cast about for it with as much anxiety as you would for a scent.

I have already said in speaking of the use of maps in the Pyrenees, that the great advantage of the 1/100,000 map was the clear way in which it marked the _paths_. The idea of paths does not fit in very well with the wild life which the Pyrenees promise one as one reads of them at home, and it is of importance to know what a Pyrenean “Path” is, and why such tracks are essential to travel in these mountains.

It is perfectly true that if you are going to camp and fish, or ramble about certain small districts for your pleasure, the point is unimportant, but if you are making a journey from one place to another, upon a set itinerary, a very little experience in the mountains will show you that a “path” must be known and followed, nor do the inhabitants of these hills, whose experience is based upon so many centuries, underestimate the value of these slight and _sometimes imperceptible_ tracks. On the contrary, you will hear one of the mountaineers carefully indicating to some fellow of his, who has not yet made a particular crossing, how to find and keep the _path_. You do not hear him giving general indications of scenery, nor distant landmarks, but particular directions as to how the path may be made out in passages where it is difficult to trace.