Part 22

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.

[Illustration: THE CANIGOU]

VII

INNS OF THE PYRENEES

[Illustration]

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.