more dependent upon himself and less in fear of invasion, is that of
the Val Dastan, by which, and the high Port d’Oo, one can get down to
Venasque. For this valley one goes up the new lateral road from Luchon as
though one were going into the Val d’Aure and to Arreau. One may leave
the road at any point after St. Aventin to follow the stream below, but
it is best to go on to a village called Gari, which is somewhat more than
5 miles from Luchon. At Gari is a road going south along a valley; you
follow that valley still going southward, till the road comes to an end
in the neighbourhood of a wood which bars the upper end of the vale. A
path, however, continues the line of the road, makes its way through the
wood, and at the upper end of it you come out upon a fine lake. There is
an inn to the south of this lake, and if you will go on a little north
of the inn along the shores of the lake you will find very good camping
ground. Indeed, it is wise to camp over-night on this side of the range,
for the climb up from Luchon is fatiguing, and the country of a sort
inviting one to rest and look about one.
Rejoining the path it passes between two small lakes, just after leaving
the wood, and climbs up the torrent past the little tarn called the Lac
Glacé, immediately above which is the Port d’Oo. This port is a very
high one, it falls little short of 9000 feet, and it is not more than
a depression in the ridge around. On the further side a steep scramble
marked by no path, gets one down into the valley beneath the Posets, and
this valley is the same as that which I have described as lying to the
east of the Col de Gistain and leading to the Bridge of Cuberre, and
so to Venasque. It is a long and difficult way round to that town from
Luchon by the Port d’Oo, but it is the wildest and therefore the best
excursion one can make in the circuit of these hills.
I should mention before I leave this district that curious plain, Des
Etangs “Of the Lakes,” where is the Trou du Toro, a small circular pond.
The main source of the Garonne lies high up as befits the dignity of
such a river in among the very noblest peaks of the Pyrenees; it springs
from the eastern point of the Maladetta, flows down in a torrent to this
plain “Of the Lakes,” plunges into the little pond, and there wholly
disappears! It reappears 2000 feet down at the Goueil de Jeou, on the
northern side of the mountains, having burrowed right under the main
range, and so runs down to Las Bordas. Sceptics to whom all in these
bewitched mountains is abhorrent, from the realities of Lourdes to the
legends of Charlemagne, annoyed by this miraculous action on the part of
the Garonne, poured heavy dyes into the Trou du Toro, and then went and
watched anxiously at Goueil de Jeou to see the coloured stream emerge;
but the Garonne was too dignified to oblige them, and the water came
out limpid and pure; as for the dye, it has stuck somewhere underground
in the hills, and is colouring rocks that will never be seen until the
consummation of all things at the end of the world.
[Illustration: THE TARBES VALLEYS & LUCHON]
V. ANDORRA AND THE CATALAN VALLEYS
[Illustration]
One may consider together Andorra in the Spanish valley of the Segre, the
upper valley of the Noguera Pallaresa and Val d’Aran, for the journey
through Andorra down to Seo, thence up out of the valley of the Segre
into that of the Noguera, and so over to the Upper Garonne, makes one
round, in which one covers one whole district of the Pyrenees, all
Catalan.
There are two ways by which the curious country of Andorra can be reached
from the north; both ultimately depend upon the valley of the Ariège.
The first shortest and most difficult way is by the vale of the Aston,
a tributary of the Ariège which comes down a lateral valley and falls
in near the railway station of Cabanes as the line from Foix to Ax; the
second and easier way is by climbing to the sources of the Ariège itself,
the main river, and over the Embalire.
As to the first—all the spreading rocky valleys which combine to feed
the river Aston, form together a district of the very best for those who
propose to explore but one corner of the Pyrenees during a short holiday.
Even if such a traveller be unable or do not choose to force one of the
entries into Andorra, he will have found on the Aston a country in which
a man may camp and fish and climb anywhere, with a sense of liberty quite
unknown in this kingdom. Here are half a dozen or more little lakes, deep
forests, occasional cabanes, good shelter, good bits of rock for such as
like the risk, and outlines and distances of the most astonishing kind,
and no landlords. Of the many high valleys I have seen in the world,
there is none less earthly than the last high reaches of the torrent
which runs between the Pic de la Cabillere and the Pic de la Coumette,
and which is the chief source of the Aston. The whole basin of this river
includes six main streams, and, of course, many smaller torrents feeding
these and the names of the peaks alone discover their desertion and the
mixture of fear and attraction which they have had for the shepherds
of these highland places. You may spend a week or a month or a whole
summer in the neighbourhood and never come on this enchanted pocket which
is bounded on the frontier by the high ridge running from the “silver
fountain,” the Fontargente, with its high peak and chain of lakes.
The Aston has at its sources, cutting them off from Spain, a ridge of
8000 to 9000 feet, it is a ridge the passes of which are but slight
notches between the higher rocks.
The ways into Andorra across this ridge from the Upper Aston are as
numerous as these notches are, and nearly every notch can be climbed with
knowledge and patience, but the only parts where something of a track
exists are the Fontargente on the east, and the Peyregrils on the west.
It is easy enough to fail at either, and there is therefore merit and
sport enough in succeeding at either.
For the Peyregrils you must start from Cabanes and follow up the main
stream of the Aston, by a clear path through the forest, taking with
you the 1/100,000 map as a guide. A little after a point where a bridge
is thrown over the river (called the Bridge of Coidenes), the two main
streams of the Aston meet, one is seen flowing down from the south-east
by the wooded gorge before one as one climbs, the other comes in cascades
down a steep gully, pointing directly north and south. It is this gully
which must be taken for the Peyregrils. One goes up over a steep rock
still in the thick of the wood. On the far side of it one comes out into
open grass country, and has one’s first sight of the main range. The path
comes down again to the stream, having turned the cascade, crosses the
stream and flows along its right or eastern bank between the water and
a range of cliffs which are those of the Pic du Col de Gas. About a mile
from this crossing of the stream, as one goes on southward with a little
west in one’s direction, one comes to a side torrent falling in from the
left; the path crosses this torrent, and still continues up the right
bank of the main stream. It is a difficult point—for the path appears to
bifurcate, and by taking the left-hand branch, as I did four years ago,
one may lose oneself in the empty valley under the Cabillere and be cut
off for two days as I was, or for ever, as I was not. It is by making
these easy mistakes that men do get cut off, and you may be certain that
people who are found dead in the mountains under small precipices, are
not, as the newspapers say, killed by some accident, but by exhaustion.
They have wandered in a mist, or have been lost in some other fashion,
until privation so weakens them that they no longer have a foothold; and
in general, the great danger of mountains is not a danger of falling, but
of getting cut off from men. Here, as in many other difficulties of this
kind, your compass will save you; for if you find you are going more and
more to the east, you are on the wrong path. The right one goes south by
west along the left bank of the stream. There is a broad jasse or pasture
which one traverses in all its length, one crosses another torrent coming
in from a rocky gorge upon the left, the torrent and the path together
turn more and more westward until one’s general direction is due west,
and at last one comes up against steep cliffs which are those of the
Etang Blanc.
Thence, the way is plain, for the stream receives no further affluents
and there is therefore no ambiguity of direction. The path follows the
stream round a corner of rock whence one can see a tarn called the
Etang de Soulauet, lying immediately under the watershed, and from that
tarn the traveller goes straight up for 500 yards or so over the crest,
straight down the steep further side, and finds at the bottom of the
valley the stream called Rialb: such is the passage called the Peyregrils.
Once one is down on the banks of the Rialb, one has but to follow the
trail which runs along the bank of that stream, cross it, reach the
hamlet of Serrat, and so follow the broadening water to the little town
of Ordino; four miles beyond is Andorra the Old. The whole distance from
the pass to Andorra is somewhat over 12 miles, counting all the windings
of the way. On this, as on so many crossings of the Pyrenees, the
difficulty is wholly on the French side, once on the Spanish the broader
valleys lead one without difficulty down one’s way.
The other entry into Andorra from the valley of the Aston, that by the
Fontargente, is managed thus:—
When the Aston divides just after the bridge, one takes the south-eastern
fork, one crosses the bridge and finds a clear path going up the right
bank of the main stream of the Aston through a wood. Four miles on this
path brings one out of the wood, and for another 4 miles it goes on still
following the same side of the stream in a direction which is at first
east of south, and at last curls round due south. There is a bridge or
two crossing to the other side, but one must not take them. One must
keep close to the eastern or right bank of the Aston all the way until
one comes to a place difficult to recognize, and yet the recognition of
which is immediately essential to success. It is a jasse rather narrow
and small, lying between a rocky ridge upon the left or east and a line
of cliffs upon the right or west. Here are a few cabanes, and even if one
has missed the place on first coming to it, it can be recognized from
the fact, that, at the further end of this jasse, the two sources of the
Aston meet in almost one straight line, making with the main stream one
has been following, a shape like the letter “T.”
The path branches and takes either valley or arm of the “T”; it is that
to the _left_ or east down which one must turn—the one to the right or
west leads nowhere but to the impassable cliffs and precipices of the
Passade and the Cabillere. The eastern or right-hand path then must be
followed in a direction just south of east for exactly 1 mile, during
all of which it keeps to the north of the stream. At the end of that
mile it crosses the stream, turns gradually round a high lump of rocky
hill, going first south, then in a few yards south-west until it comes,
at about a mile from the place where it crossed, upon the large tarn or
small lake of Fontargente, “The Silver Water.” The port lies in view just
above the lake not 500 yards off. Once over it, it is the same story as
the Peyregrils, a trail following running water which leads one through
the upper villages to Canillo, the first town, to Encamps, the second
one, and so down to Andorra the Old. The distance from the main range to
Andorra by this trail is 2 or 3 miles greater than by the Peyregrils.
These are the two difficult and mountain ways of making Andorra from the
north.
The easier and much the commoner way is to approach it from the upper
waters of the Ariège.
One takes the main road from Ax to Hospitalet up which there is a public
carriage or “diligence”; it is as well to go on foot, for one will
get to Hospitalet before the diligence if one starts at the dawn of a
summer’s day, and it is important to get there early as there is no good
sleeping place between the French side and the town of Andorra itself.
At Hospitalet the main track for Andorra runs down in a few feet to the
torrent of the Ariège, crosses it, and follows its left bank. It goes
over the frontier which is here an artificial line, and though you are
still on the French side of the range, you are politically in Andorra,
upon this deserted grassy slope which forms the left bank of the Ariège.
At the second torrent which comes down this slope into the river—or
rather the second stream, for they are quite small—the telegraph wire,
which has hitherto followed the path, will be seen going over to the
right, up a somewhat steep side valley. This is at a point about 4
miles from Hospitalet. You have but to follow that line if it is fine
weather, and you will come right over the ridge and down on to the
Spanish side of the Andorran hamlet, Saldeu. If it is misty on the
heights you will almost certainly lose the line, and possibly your life
as well. Nevertheless the crossing can be made even in bad weather by
going somewhat further south to the point called the Port d’Embalire.
To find this needs a certain care. Note with your compass the trend of
the Ariège; it curves round more and more as you follow it, and when it
begins to point _due south_ (which it does after a perceptible bend)
you may note a fairly plain track coming down from the opposite side
of the valley: it comes down and strikes the Ariège at a spot almost
exactly 2 miles from the place where the line of the telegraph left the
stream. Here opposite the road turn sharp up away from the Ariège (which
is now but a tiny brook) and go _due west_ by your compass right up the
mountain, which is here nothing but a steep grassy slope, and you will
strike the Embalire.
It is one of the few crossings which can be made in any weather, because
you will find upon that slope, a little way up, the beginnings of a made
road; that road was never completed. It has never been metalled, but
it is culverted and graded, and is as good a guide as the best highway
in the Pyrenees could be. Probably it never will be finished, for the
Andorrans are opposed to an easy entry into their country; but so long
as its platform remains, one can never lose one’s way upon the Port
d’Embalire. The further side is a steep and easy descent over a sort
of down, and one finds Saldeu by this longer route about 4 miles from
the summit. Whether one has followed the telegraph line or come over by
the Embalire, the two tracks join at Saldeu, and the rest of the way
is identical with that which you will come to by Fontargente, that is,
through Canillo and Encamps to Andorra the Old.
Easy as the way is, however, it should be remembered that it is a long
day from Ax, for counting every turning, it is not far short of 30 miles,
and more than half of that is uphill. Ax stands at about 2000 to 2400
feet (according to the part of the steep town one measures from) and the
summit of the Embalire is almost exactly 8000 feet. There is no break in
the rise from one to the other.
The interest of Andorra lies in its survival, and the recognition it
receives of being an Independent European State. All these enclosed
valleys of the Pyrenees led a more or less independent life for
centuries; from a decline of the Roman power until the union of Aragon
and Castille on the Spanish side, and on the French side in some places,
up to the Revolution itself, they boasted their own customs and could
plead their own law.
The violent quarrel between Madrid and Aragon, in which the independence
of Aragon was fiercely destroyed, affected the greater part of the
Spanish valleys, and killed their independence; but it did not attack the
Catalan valleys—of which Andorra was the most secluded and remote, and
therefore Andorra survives.
One may study in Andorra what all these valleys were in the long period
of local and natural growths between the very slow death of the Roman
bureaucracy, and the rapid rise of the modern. The French, through the
Prefect of the Ariège (as representing the Crown of France, which in its
turn inherited from the county of Foix) claim a partial control over the
Andorrans who pay to the Government in Paris £40 a year in fealty. The
Spaniards have a hold on it through the Bishop of Urgel, who is not only
their Ordinary but also their Civil Suzerain: he gets only £18 a year
from the embattled farmers.
The Andorrans have all the vices and virtues of democracy clearly
apparent. They are very well-to-do, a little hard, avaricious, courteous,
fond of smuggling, and jealous of interference. Also in Andorra itself
one great shop supplies their external needs, and conducts all their
international exchanges. Catalan, a provincial dialect in Spain, is here
the national language. They are divided, as are all Catholics, into
Clericals and Anti-Clericals, the Clericals making, I believe, a working
majority, and there is not among them, so far as one can see, a poor man
or an oppressed one.
From Andorra the Old, a good open path leads through the narrow gates of
the country, down on to the valley of the Segre, and so to Seo de Urgel.
* * * * *
Though it is but a few hours’ walk from Andorra to Urgel, it is as well
to pass the remainder of the day and the night at Urgel, especially if
it is the first Spanish town you have seen, as it is the first for many
people who cross the mountains at this place. You will certainly find
nothing more Spanish along the whole range. This lump of a town with
its narrow oriental streets was the pivot of the Christian advance into
Catalonia. The Carolingian armies came pouring through that easiest of
the passes, the Cerdagne, enfranchised Urgel, first of all the Mozarabic
Bishoprics, and may be said to have refounded its Christian existence.
For some reason difficult to discover Urgel fossilized quite early in the
Middle Ages. No line of travel, no road linked up the long valley of the
Segre, the armies and the embassies of the French knew nothing of Lerida,
and it is characteristic of Urgel to-day that even to-day there should be
no great road beyond it up the valley.
From Urgel your road back into France through the upper valley of the
Noguera Pallaresa, and the Val d’Aran is difficult to discover in its
earlier part, unmistakable in the high mountains; which is the reverse of
the rule usual in other crossings of the hills.
You must go down the high road which runs south of Urgel until you come,
in something over a mile, to Ciudad, which is that hill-pile of white
houses, once fortified, which rises over against the Cathedral city.
There you must ask the way to Castellbo, which is two or three hours away
up a torrent bed, and you must go up this torrent bed by way of a road.
If you start early from Urgel you will be at Castellbo well before noon,
and the hospitality of the place is so great that you will wish to stay
there. There is only one drawback to eating at Castellbo which is that
you have after it to make a passage of the mountains which, though here
not very high, well wooded and fairly inhabitated, do not bring you to
proper food and shelter until you have gone close on 20 miles and have
reached Llavorsi in the further valley of the Noguera; and so, if you
stop to eat your mid-day meal at Castellbo, it is quite on the cards
that you will have to camp out in the hills and that you will not make
Llavorsi until noon of the following day; for the col in between, though
it is very easy, is higher above the sea than the Somport.
From Castellbo you have but to ask for the village of St. Croz, which
is perched upon a height just up the same valley, but from there to the
port the way is difficult to find for the very reason that there are no
_physical_ difficulties. It is all one long ridge of wooded grass like a
down, with rather higher peaks to the right and to the left and with more
than one indication of a path several directions. A good rule, however,
for finding the exact place where you should cross, is to make for a spot
due north-west from the village of St. Croz, and this spot is further
distinguished by the fact that it is on the whole lowest upon the whole
saddle. It is a mile and a quarter or a mile and a half from the village,
and as you go to it over the easy grass you get a superb vision of the
Sierra del Cadi barring your view of Catalonia and standing up against
you much higher than ever it seemed from the floor of the Cerdagne. No
hills in Europe look so marvellously high.
As the saddle of this port, which is called the port of St. John, is so
long and easy it might seem indifferent at what point one crossed it;
it is on the contrary very important to get the _exact_ place and for
this reason, that on the further or north-western side of it there is a
profound ravine densely wooded, if one does not make the _exact_ spot one
has no path through this wood. That means hours of delay and one may very
well come out upon the right instead of the left bank of the ravine; in
which case in order to find the trail for Llavorsi at the bottom of the
valley one may have a precipitous descent into the ravine and a bad climb
out of it on the other side. Look, therefore, carefully for the path
which begins to be clearly marked the moment the saddle is crossed, and
follow down it until you come to a steep rock which overhangs the main
stream at the bottom of the valley. This main stream is the Magdalena and
runs not quite 2000 feet below the summit of the port. The trail is very
distinct when once one has reached the valley; small villages are passed;
it climbs up on the left bank to avoid a precipitous place and comes down
to the water again at a place where the Magdalena falls into the main
stream of the Noguera.
Here you must descend to the floor of the valley and take the road
which is being made and which will in a few years form another great
international highway up the valley of the Noguera. The road runs all
the way on the left or eastern bank of the stream, which is broad and
rapid and confined by very high steep hills upon either side. Three miles
from the place where the path descended to the junction of the Magdalena
and the Noguera, you will find another large river coming in. The road
crosses by a wooden cantilever bridge where one pays a toll (I think of
½d.), and once across one is in the unpleasing village of Llavorsi.
The valley opens somewhat and is called Anéu, having on the left the
exceedingly rugged and tangled chain of the Encantados, a wilderness
of rocky peaks and lakes—and on the right a clear ridge which cuts off
this country-side from the Val Cardos and the Val Farreira, both wild
districts at whose summits is a bit of country as lonely as the Upper
Aston.
All the way from Llavorsi up this Anéu valley the new road runs. I
have not visited it for four years, and by this time it must be nearly
finished, at any rate it is perfectly straight going and in all between
10 and 12 miles, with the exceedingly filthy village of Escaló about
half-way.
It is not easy to give advice about sleeping in this walk from Urgel to
Esterri. The distance between the two towns in a straight line is less
than thirty miles, but the perpetual turning of the path makes it quite
forty by the time one has reached Esterri, and what with the casting
about for the right crossing on the port and the height of that crossing,
it is too much for anyone to try and do in one day. Even if one were to
sleep at Castellbo it would not mend matters much, for Castellbo is but
a sixth of the distance, if that, and I would not recommend sleeping at
Llavorsi. I have said that if one ate at Castellbo in the morning, it
would mean camping out in the woods below the port of St. John and this
is perhaps the best plan after all: to leave Urgel on the morning of
one day, to camp in the deep woods above the Magdalena and to sleep at
Esterri, on the night of the second day. There is a good inn at Esterri,
where everything is comfortable and clean, and the whole place is more
civilized than any other town or village in the Pallars.
The next day you will go over the Pass of Bonaigo into the Val d’Aran,
unless you prefer the much less amusing walk by the new road up over
the Port de Salau to St. Girons. It is less amusing because it gets you
into France almost at once, whereas the walk into the Val d’Aran keeps
you in Spain and shows you a very interesting geographical and political
accident of the Pyrenees.
The town of the Val d’Aran is called Viella, and it lies 20 miles west by
north of Esterri, between the two there is no obstacle but a high grassy
saddle called the Port of Bonaigo the summit of which is exactly 3283
feet above the floor of the Noguera at Esterri, and the interest of which
lies in this, that it stands right upon the junction of that “fault”
which was mentioned in the first division of this book.