Part 11
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.
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V
TRAVEL ON FOOT IN THE PYRENEES
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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.