There are two kinds of platforms for travel in the Pyrenees—mule tracks and great, highly engineered, modern roads. No others exist. When, therefore, one is describing travel in the Pyrenees, one must separately describe the opportunities of wheeled travel open to all vehicles, however elaborate, and of travel on foot or with a mule. As the last will take up the greater part of my space, I will speak of wheeled travel first.

To understand what are the opportunities of this, one may take as one’s standard the roads which can be traversed by a motor car. Those passages which a motor car cannot use cannot be used by a bicycle or a carriage, for the roads of the Pyrenees are, as I have said, either very good broad roads, well graded, and with a hard surface, or they do not exist; the change is always abrupt throughout the chain from an excellent highway, carefully engineered, to a mule track.

The scheme of Pyrenean roads, as it exists now, is, briefly, first: a couple of great lateral roads on the French side, which may be called the upper and the lower road; next, four roads traversing the chain (six if you count the roads along the sea-coast at either end, which I omit—the one goes by St. Jean de Luz, the other by the Pass of Lacleuse or La Perthuis); thirdly, a series of roads, numerous on the French side, rare on the Spanish, which penetrate the valleys but do not cross the chain, and end at a greater or less distance from the watershed.

The main lateral road from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, along the base of the Pyrenees, links up all the towns upon the plains; it joins Bayonne to Pau, Pau to Tarbes, Tarbes to St. Gaudens, and so on through St. Girons, Foix, and Quillan to Perpignan: this may be called the Lower Road. The upper road has been but recently completed. It is made up of sections, some of which are old highways, some links quite newly built, and the characteristic of the whole is that it skirts as nearly as possible the crest of the main chain, crossing at some places very high passes over the lateral ridges, and everywhere keeping right up against the high summits of the range. The whole line runs from Perpignan over the Col de la Perche up the Val Carol and over the Puymorens to Ax, Tarascon, and St. Girons. At St. Girons, it is compelled by the conformation of the country to touch the lower road, but it leaves it at once to pass from Fronsac to Luchon; thence through Arreau, Luz, Argelès, Laruns, Oloron, and Mauléon—all the high mountain towns—to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, and thence back again to Bayonne.

The four roads over the ridge into Spain lie all of them on the western side of the hills. They are, first, the road through the Baztan valley, which connects Bayonne with Pamplona; secondly, the Roman road over Roncesvalles, 12 or 15 miles to the east of this, which used to be the high road between Bayonne and Pamplona before the Baztan road was built, and which was during all history the westernmost road of invasion and communication between Gaul and Spain; thirdly, the road which goes over the Somport, which was also a Roman road and the chief one, uniting Saragossa with the French plains; fourthly, a road parallel to this and not 10 miles east of it, running over the Pourtalet Pass and joining the Saragossa road lower down. No other roads cross the range from France into Spain until one reaches the Mediterranean, and all these four lie within the first westernmost third of the Pyrenees.

It would be quite easy to open other roads which should unite the last of the Spanish highways with the first of the French, notably over the easy pass of Bonaigo, where 20 miles of work would be enough, and through the Cerdagne, where there are no engineering difficulties. One such road is now in process of completion between Esterri and St. Girons over the pass of Salau. Another, which was begun from the valley of the Ariège into Andorra, was abruptly stopped, and it will probably never be completed. There are some half-dozen other places, where a road could cross and where the French are building their side of it: but the Spaniards are reluctant to meet them.

Of the roads of the third kind, roads running up the valleys but not attempting to cross the mountains, one may say that on the French side every valley has one or more good roads, the one drawback to the use of which in a motor is that you are compelled, unless you can take a cross road from one high valley to another high valley, to go back by the way you came into the plain.

Not only has every valley its highway leading to the very foot of the main range, but often the bifurcations of the valley will have roads as well. Thus along the valley of the Nive you can go in a motor not only to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, but also right up the eastern valley to a country-side called the “Baigorry” as far as Urepel; along the next Basque valley to the east, you can go from Mauléon in the plains right up into the hills as far as Larrau, but you cannot go to Ste. Engrace, where the valley splits, because the track thither, though a good one, will not take wheels. You can go up the branch valley from Oloron as high as Aritte, and the main road up the Val d’Aspe (which is that leading to Jaca by the old Roman way), has lateral branches, one taking you to Lourdios, the other across the foot hills to Arudy and the Val d’Ossau. The valley of Lourdes has a road which, with the exception of the roads over the passes, goes nearest to the main watershed. I mean the road to Gavarnie; and the Val d’Aure, which comes next to the westward, has a road going as far as Aragnonette, almost as close to the last cliffs as Gavarnie is; and there is an embranchment to the east which takes one to the very foot at the Hôpital of Rivanagon in one of the loneliest parts of the hills. The road to Bagnères de Luchon is carried some miles beyond that town, as far as the Hospitalet, which stands at the foot of the pass into Spain. The road to Viella in the Val d’Oran goes on up to within a mile or two of the pass of Bonaigo. A road from St. Girons takes one up the valley of the Lez as far as Sentein, which, like Gavarnie, lies right under the main chain, while the road from the same town up the main valley of the Sallent goes up to the watershed itself, and is being constructed to cross it, and to afford (over the pass of Salau) one more badly needed passage into Spain. The valley of the Ariège has a road all along it, almost to the sources of that river. It is continued through the Cerdagne and down the valley of the Tet into the Roussillon.

There is not a main valley on the French side of the Pyrenees which has not its great carriage road, and most of the lateral valleys have now the same kind of communications. The journey up them is nearly always of the same kind, save the few which are prolonged to carry over the watershed into Spain. There is the succession of two or three enclosed plains or jasses after one has left the plains, the sharp pitch up to one flat, and then another, through short but steep rocky gorges, till we reach the little terminal mountain village, sometimes not more than a group of three or four buildings, lying under the last escarpment, and in sight of the frontier ridge above it. Of this terminal sort was Urdos until Napoleon III pushed the road out beyond it into Spain; Gabas, until the Republic did the same with the road there; and of this sort still an old Hospitalet, Sentein in the Val d’Aure, and though it is in a state of transition, for the road is now being pushed beyond it, of this sort is Gavarnie. Little places almost as old as our race, with no history and no national memories, but with immemorial traditions, rooted as deep as the mountains, were brought into the life of our time by that new activity of the French, which is to many foreigners so hateful, to many others so marvellous.

On the Spanish side there are no roads of this kind penetrating the valleys except the incomplete road to Isaba from Pamplona by way of the Val d’Anso, and the short stretch from Sandinies to Panticosa.

A road is being made up the Val d’Anéu, but it is not yet finished, and a road goes just so far up the broad Segre valley as Seu d’Urgel.

All the other valleys have mule tracks alone.

The general scheme of existing roads in the Pyrenees is roughly as upon the map on previous page, where it will be seen that much the greater length of the chain is impassable to a wheeled vehicle.

Motoring sets a standard for every other form of wheeled traffic, I will therefore first speak of this kind of travel. The best road to take with a motor, if one wishes to obtain a general idea of the Pyrenees, is the Lower Road (by Tarbes and Foix) from Bayonne to Perpignan; one may then come back again from Perpignan to Bayonne by the upper road, many parts of which are of very recent construction and which goes right through the highest part of the chain across the main lateral valleys of the Pyrenees. Such a round—about 500 miles altogether—gives one from far and from near the whole of the French Pyrenees: from the first one sees the chain as a whole before one: by the second one mixes with its deepest valleys.

The first day’s run from Bayonne had best end at Tarbes; it is a town central with regard to the chain, and it is also a very pleasant place to stop at under any conditions; not cosmopolitan like Pau, and not in a hole and corner like Foix.

The lower road from Bayonne to Tarbes runs through Orthez, Puyoo, and Pau, and if one starts early, Pau is a good halting-place for the middle of the day. This part of the road is, during the whole of its length or nearly the whole of it, a rolling road of the plains with no striking points of view save in where it tops a slight rise. It first follows but runs above and north of the valley of the Adour below it, next descends after the first 20 miles or so to cross the Adour, and so comes to Peyrehorade, the first town (and railway station) upon its course. During all this first part of the run one has sight after sight of the range which stretches out eastward before one to the south rising higher as it goes; and one sees at first before one upon the horizon, later abreast of one and due south, the pyramid of the Pic d’Anie, which is the first of the high peaks.

From Peyrehorade to Pau, between 40 and 50 miles, the road goes through Orthez along the valley of the Gave de Pau, for the most part following the river bank and allowing but few sights of the range; but at Pau itself it rises on to the high plateau of the town whence the most famous general view of the Pyrenees is spread before one.

From Pau there are two roads to Tarbes; for curiosity and for general travel it is the road round by Lourdes which is generally taken, and that is during the whole of its length a lowland road though it runs among the foot hills; but the better road on such a drive as I am describing is the direct northern road, which, after it has climbed on to the plateau of Vignan, goes up and down steep small ravines until it comes down again upon the main valley of the Adour and the plain of Tarbes.

There are on this road two points, one just after one leaves the railway line, not quite half-way to Tarbes on the climb up to Vignan, the other just before the loop and descent above Ibos, which afford fine views of the range to the south, and one begins to gather one’s general impression of these mountains, which, more than any other range, present an appearance of simplicity and the united effect of a barrier. Tarbes, less than 30 miles from Pau, may seem a short run for one day from Bayonne, but it breaks the journey exactly and conveniently.

After Tarbes (where the hotel for you is the Hotel Des Ambassadeurs) the road goes through much broken country, passing by Tournay up on the high plateau of Lannemezan to Montréjeau. It is a road full of short hills, but it is necessary to take this section in order to go eastward from Montréjeau and to proceed through St. Gaudens, taking an elbow by St. Martary and so down to St. Girons.

After St. Girons one follows the new and excellent road which runs along the valley side by side with the new railway to Foix. From Foix to Nalzen your way is to go along the main road from Foix up the Ariège Valley for some 4 miles and then turn to the left, leaving the railway and making due east. From Nalzen continue to Lavenalet; there take the right-hand road to Belesta and Belcaire; thence, when you have crossed the plateau, a very winding road takes you down hundreds of feet, on to Quillan. After Quillan you have a few miles through the very little known and wonderful gorges of Pierre Lys to St. Martin, through which gorges the railway accompanies you. Do not follow it round by Axat, but cut across by the road which goes eastward to La Pradelle. This road takes you across a low pass to the watershed of the Mediterranean. From La Pradelle to Perpignan the road is a perfectly clear one through St. Paul and Estagel. It is a straight, good road, following the valley all the way, save the last stretch, which runs across the plains between the river Agly and the Tet.

This second day will of course be far longer than the first; it is nearer 200 miles than 120. If you would break it, however, break it rather after the short run to St. Girons, than at Foix, for though Foix be nearly the half-way house, yet the accommodation is better at St. Girons, and so is the cooking.

A two days’ run of this kind from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, following such a route, gives you the whole distant range in one general appearance, and gives it you better than you will have along any other line with which I am acquainted.

The way back by the upper road from east to west through the Pyrenees is a piece of travel quite peculiar to these mountains; nowhere else in Europe is there a lateral road driven right across the buttresses or supports of a main range. The Pyrenees possess such a road in their highest part. What the French have done here is as though the Italians had driven a road from the sources of the Dora Baltea right under Mont Rosa, and the Matterhorn to Lake Maggiore, or as though the Swiss had driven one from Faido and Fusia right over into the valley of Domo d’Ossola. From Tarascon in the valley of the Ariège to Laruns in the Val d’Ossau—that is, over all the central part of the chain and for just over half its length—a mountain road goes right up against the main heights (only once coming near the lowlands at St. Girons), crossing the high, perilous passes which lie between the upper valleys. By taking advantage of this new piece of engineering you can return from Perpignan to Bayonne through the midst of those hills which the road just described from Bayonne to Perpignan showed you in a distant general view: when you have so returned you will have seen the heart, the French Pyrenees.

I will now describe such a return journey by the upper road. From Perpignan you will do well to run the first day to Ax. The road is the great road from the Roussillon into France. You go up the valley of the Tet (which is the main river of the Roussillon) through Prades with the Canigou first right in front of you, and at last rising steeply to your left. You continue through Prades up the gorges and tortuous zigzags of the Upper River until you come to the head of the pass at Mont Louis: there the broad and easy valley of the Cerdagne opens to the south, sloping gently before you. The road runs down, almost as in a plain, to Bourg Madame, where you must turn to the right up the Val Carol to Porté. The pass above Porté (called the “Puymorens”) though long, is of an easy gradient, and once over it you run down all the 18 miles to Ax, following the valley of the Ariège.

Ax is, of course, an early stopping-place. The whole distance from Perpignan is under 140 miles, but Ax is so much more comfortable than Tarascon that it is better to make one’s halt there.

Next day go down the valley as far as Tarascon and there take the mountain road off to the left; it is not a national[1] road but it has a perfectly good surface in spite of a considerable climb. One little col comes almost immediately at Bedeillac, after that you climb steadily up the valley to the Col-du-Port (which is about 4000 feet high) then down the mountain side to Massat, which lies on the western side of the pass and about 2000 feet below it. Thence it is an ordinary valley road until you come to St. Girons again.

From St. Girons you continue this progress parallel to the watershed and right among the high peaks, by taking the cross road from St. Girons to the valley of the Garonne. Just before the railway station at St. Girons turn sharp to your left, taking the road which goes up the left bank of the Lez. At this starting point you are not more than 1300 or 1400 feet above the sea; at Audressein (300 feet up) turn to the right, cross the river, and begin to climb the upper valley until you reach the col of Portet-d’Aspet at about 3400 feet, that is, some 2000 feet above St. Girons, and between 15 and 20 miles from that town. From this col the road descends rapidly down the valley of the river Ger, falling in 5 miles 1500 or 1600 feet. At the end of the 5 miles you take a road that goes sharp off to the left before reaching the village of Sengouagnet, this road going off to the left crosses a low watershed, makes, at the end of another 5 miles, a great loop round the forest of Moncaup (the church of which village you leave to the left just before making the turn), and comes down into the great open plain into which the valley of the Garonne here enlarges. It is one of the finest enclosed plains in the Pyrenees, and to come down upon it by this road is perhaps the best way to approach it.

The first village in this plain is Antichan, thence several long windings take one down to Frontignan below, and thence it is a straight road through Fronsac to Chaum where there is a bridge over the river, and where the plain of which I have spoken terminates in a narrow gateway through the hills. You cross the river by this bridge, fall at once into the great national road upon the further or left bank, and a straight run of not more than 12 miles in which one only rises 300 or 400 feet up the tributary valley brings one to Bagnères-de-Luchon. Though at the end of an even shorter day than was Ax from Perpignan, Bagnères will make a convenient stopping-place after a good deal of hill climbing and roads the surface of which, especially in the early summer, is occasionally doubtful. Bagnères has, of course, everything that people motoring can want, it is the capital of the touring Pyrenees, and even if this cross journey has not proved enough for one day, the character of Bagnères makes it the right place to stop at on the second day.

Though Bagnères is right in the middle of the mountains, but a mile or two from the frontier of Spain, not 6 miles, as the crow flies, from the watershed and within ten of the highest peaks of the Pyrenees, yet the importance of the town has caused good communications to spring up around it, and there is an excellent road crossing straight over from the high valley of Bagnères into the next high valley, the Val d’Aure. It starts at the market-place just opposite the new church, crosses the col called “Port-de-Peyredsourde,” and comes down into the main road of the Val d’Aure at Avajan, which follows down the stream at an even gradient to Arreau, 7 miles further on.

Arreau is the capital of the Val d’Aure, and when you have reached it you will have come about 20 miles from Bagnères.

The next parallel valley to the Val d’Aure is that of the Gave-de-Pau: the valley which has at its mouth the town of Lourdes, and at its head, right under the Spanish frontier, the famous village and cliff of Gavarnie. There is, indeed, a small subsidiary valley in between where the Adour takes its rise, and of which Bagnères-de-Bigorre is the capital, but it is shorter and stands lower than the two main valleys upon either side. The section I am about to describe, the great new road from the Val d’Aure to the Valley of Lourdes, just touches this upper valley of the Adour but does not pursue it.

The cross road from Arreau in the Val d’Aure to Luz in the valley of Lourdes is the steepest and the most diverse in gradient, as it is also by far the finest in scenery, of all the new sections which have recently been pierced through the highest parts of the range and between them build up what I have called “The Upper Road.” The distance as the crow flies from Arreau to Luz is not 20 miles, but the long windings of the road which take it over two passes, and the northern diversion necessary to turn the great mountain mass of the Port Bieil, lengthen it to nearly double that distance.

There is no mistaking this road. It branches off at Arreau, leaving the valley road not half a mile beyond the bridge and going to the left up a little side stream, the name of which I do not know. Within 2 miles it crosses this stream and begins to take the long complicated and graded turns up the mountain. One must be careful, by the way, at the point where the road crosses the stream to turn sharp to the right and not go straight on towards Aspin, for though one can get to the main road again from Aspin, it is by roads too steep for a motor. If one so turns to the right, the road goes up to the col in great zigzags and climbs in some 6 or 7 miles the 2000 feet between Arreau and the summit, thence it falls rapidly for 3 or 4 miles to a point where the new road cuts off the corner the old road used to make. It is important to recognize this point, not only because it saves one at least 6 or 7 miles of travelling, but also because it saves one going right down into the valley of the Adour and climbing up again. I will therefore attempt to fix for the traveller the exact place where he must turn off to the left, though the description is difficult on account of the absence of any landmark.

As you come down from the Col d’Aspin, you run through a wood along the mountain side for perhaps 2 miles. The road sweeps round the curve of a gulley on emerging from this wood, crosses the rivulet of that gulley, and comes down close to the stream at the foot of the valley which is the source of the Adour. Just at this point a road will be seen coming in from the left, descending the slope of the valley beyond the stream and crossing it by a bridge. This is not the road you are to take. You must continue on the same road you have been following down from the pass, until, in about half a mile, it crosses the stream to the left bank, and approaches on that bank a wood that lies above one on the hill. Immediately after this bridge there is a bifurcation; one branch goes straight on, the other goes off to the left; this last is the one you must follow. The branch going straight on is the old road which leads down the valley of the Adour, and from which one used to have to double back some miles on at an acute angle to reach Luz. The new road, which you must thus take to the left, cuts off that angle.

There are no difficulties from this point onward. The road winds a good deal round the hill-side, and almost exactly 5 miles from the point where you turned into it you come again upon the main road to Luz over a bridge that crosses a stream. Just where you join that main road it begins its long climb up to the pass called Col du Tourmalet.

This pass is the highest and steepest on the secondary or lateral passes, over which the new roads have recently been driven. It is just under 7000 feet in height, is everywhere practicable, and once it is surmounted there is a clear run down of some 10 miles and more (following the valley called locally that of the Bastan) to Vielle and to Luz in the main valley.

Of all the crossings between the high valleys of the Pyrenees this is the one best worth taking. The height of the pass, the great mass of the Port Bieil dominating one side of the road, and of the Pic-du-Midi dominating the other, give it an aspect different from any other of the secondary roads, and comparable only to the two main passes of the Somport and the Val d’Ossau.

From Luz a great national road takes one down the valley to Argelès and the railway, a distance of about 18 miles, and the end of about as fine a piece of engineering as there is in Europe. From Argelès, which is just above Lourdes and whence Lourdes can be reached at once by road or by rail, the cross road which I am describing goes on over another high pass into the Val d’Ossau.

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.