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.