yet it is but the terminal point _and not the highest point_ in a long
ridge which runs south-westward to the frontier at the Roque Couloum. It
next forms that frontier for 15 or 20 miles, and is then continued past
the Port de Col Toses into Spain, where it forms the magnificent wall of
the Sierra del Cadi.
A man without heart or vision would see in the Canigou nothing but the
last northern point of that long range, but the political accident which
makes the Roussillon French, the cross chain which springs from the Pic
de Couloun and runs to the Mediterranean, and above all the aspect of
the mountains from the civilized wealthy plain to the north and east
(where the connecting ridge cannot be seen), and its false appearance of
isolation when one observes it from the sea, all make of the Canigou one
of the most individual mountains in Europe.
There are, as I have said, many heights in its own ridge, further to the
south and west, which surpass it. The Donyais is within a few feet of it,
the Enfer or Gous and the Pic du Géant next door, above the valley of
the Tet, are higher; the Puigmal just on the watershed is much higher.
The summit of the Canigou is but 1500 or 1600 feet above the crest
of the ridge in its own immediate neighbourhood, and even the lowest
point in that ridge (the Col de Boucacers) is not 2000 feet below it.
Nevertheless, it produces, as I have said, an effect of unity and of
isolation, and there is not only the illusion of its outline as seen from
the north and east, but also the fact that the mountain spreads out in a
fan of ridges from its summit to the lowlands all around, and stands upon
a broad expanded base, more or less circular in shape, spreading from the
Tech upon the south to the Tet upon the east, north, and west.
The Canigou is not a mountain that gives one any climbing to speak of,
or that affords any problems or difficulties. There is even, nowadays, a
carriage road most of the way up on the northern side, but it is the best
place for camping and changing camp that you can find anywhere. All the
flanks of it are covered with a series of dense woods; they form a belt
2 or 3 miles deep (in places nearly 5) and running almost continuously
round the whole mountain, a circuit of at least 30 miles. Your choice for
halting and camping places in these woods is infinite, there is water
everywhere and you are nowhere too far from provisions. If you will
take the road from Villefranche up to Vernet you will, at that village,
be near the steepest side of the mountain and a wood which everywhere
affords excellent camping ground. By following up the path to Casteil
and taking the track which leads south and east from that hamlet, you
are at the inhabited point nearest to its summit, and you have wood and
water up to the last mile in distance, or the last 2000 feet in height;
but remember, if you wish to make for the summit by this trail, that you
must always bear to the right as you walk, choosing always the right-hand
trail when there is a diversion, and coming out on the south side of that
ridge which has the summit at one end and the Peak de Quazémi at the
other. On the open part of this steep bit there is a definitely marked
path which follows the left bank of the stream until it is right under
the last rocks of the Canigou and then makes straight up by zigzags. If
you would go the easier way which everybody takes, you must start from
Prades, which is the town of the mountain, and in which anyone will show
you the house where the local agent of the French Alpine Club is ready
with information.
Your road goes through Taurinya (or if you start from Villefranche,
through Fillols), and the new carriage road runs up the ridge between the
two valleys—the valley of the Fillols and the valley of Taurinya—first
over open country, then through wood until you come to quite the upper
part of the Taurinya, where the road turns round the steep corner
overhanging the sources of the torrent. This particular wood is called
the wood of Balatag, a word that is not so hard to pronounce in Catalan
as in French, for the Catalans add an “e” at the end of it.
The road does not go to the actual summit, but comes out on to the
shoulder of the mountains, an open space looking to the north,
north-west and east, where stands the hotel which has been put up by the
French Alpine Club. This hotel is not quite 2000 feet below the highest
summit which lies exactly to the south of it. The other summit to the
north-east, the ridge of which comes round behind the hotel, is the Pic
Puigdarbet. You must allow five or six hours to get to the hotel without
haste from the valley of the Tet, and the road is somewhat shorter if
you start from Villefranche, than if you start from Prades, but of the
two ways, much the more interesting for a man on foot is the old way by
Casteil and the Brook Cady which I first described. Here you can camp
half-way up the mountain without fear of disturbance from travellers,
choosing, for preference, the end of the wood just under the summit, and
so make that summit at dawn.
Unless you are in a hurry to get on to Perpignan, one of the best ways of
treating the Canigou is to go across it from the valley of the Tet into
the valley of the Tech, and from Arles on the Tech to take the railway
through Ceret and Elne to Perpignan.
It is of course a long way round, but it shows you both sides of the
mountain.
You could hardly get right across the main ridge from the hotel; but you
can take the path that goes round the northern flank of the mountain,
that is, through the wood that clothes the buttresses of the Pic
Bargebit, and that comes out in the valley of the Dalmanya, a torrent
running down north-eastwards from the summit. If you are afraid of losing
your way you can go down into the village of Dalmanya and up thence by
a clear path from the church of the village to the iron mines under the
Col de Cirere; from that col there is a very winding high road (of which
of course you can cut off most of the turnings) which gets you down to
Corsady and so to Arles. On the southern side of the mountain you can go
down the path which follows the Brook of Cady, and do your best to note
the Peak of the Thirteen Winds which is the peak precisely due south of
the main summit and 3000 feet from it at the end of the long ridge. When
you have made quite certain which is the Peak of the Thirteen Winds,
cross the brook, and work up if you can to the saddle immediately
south-west of it, and between it and the Pic de Routat, which is a trifle
lower and rises a thousand yards to the south-west of the Peak of the
Thirteen Winds.
This col is called the Portaillet, and the valley on the further side
is called “The Old or Abandoned Pass.” When you have got across you
will know why. A wood covers its lower part, and a little brook called
the Cambret runs through it, but there is no regular path, and it is a
business to find the first huts, which are at an open space upon the
stream between it and the wood, and quite 4000 feet below the col.
The descent is exceedingly steep, and there I leave it.
From these huts (which are called St. Duillem) is a good plain path down
to the Tech, and to the little hamlet which has the same name as the
river (Le Tech) whence the national high road takes one in 6 miles to
Arles, the more usual crossing (which is not really a crossing of the
mountains at all, but a crossing of the ridge to the south of it) is by
the Pla de Guillem, so called because it does not go near Guillem, and
this way is as plain as a pike-staff. You take the road from Villefranche
to Fuilla, which is not quite 3 miles off, first up the Tet, then to the
left southwards up a lateral valley, you follow that lateral valley and
the high road up it from Fuilla to Py, rather more than 5 miles on, and
southward all the way from Py a path goes south-west up the right bank
of a torrent which comes in there. The track is quite clear and carries
you up to the sources of the stream, and to the saddle in the final ridge
which is called the Pla de Guillem. It is a steep climb of nearly 4000 in
rather more than 4 miles. Py at the junction of the streams is just over
3200 feet above the sea. The pass is about 7000.
On the further side also the track is quite plain, pointing down due
south-east through a little wood and then over the open country. It takes
you down to Prats de Mollo, a jolly little town, the last on the great
national road and the highest in the Tech valley. Above it the national
road becomes the local road leading to the baths and waters.
So late as the Revolutionary Wars Mollo was of importance and may
be again, for the Spanish armies could come over (but not with guns)
from the other Mollo, which lies beyond the frontier 7 or 8 miles off
south-east, over the Col of Arras. Mollo is a little lower than Py, but
the descent upon it is far less steep than was the ascent upon Py. From
Mollo it is somewhat more than 10 miles to Arles by the national road
down the valley.
* * * * *
The Canigou is so particular a thing that if a man has but little time
before him, or if he already knows the other Pyrenees—he might do worse
than go to Perpignan and spend a week upon that mountain. It should be
remembered that you have a better chance of fine weather there than in
any other part of the Pyrenees, and you will usually have dryer days upon
the Tech side than upon the Tet side.
With these eight divisions I have roughly covered the chain of the
Pyrenees for those who may, like myself, think that all travel on
these mountains should be on foot. It is, of course, but a very rough
and general survey, but it would give one, all taken together, a
comprehensive knowledge of the chain. My limits have necessarily excluded
very many valleys, some of which are unknown to me, such as the valley
of Isaba. Among those which I have not dealt with should be considered
especially the Ribagorza, which is the boundary between the Aragonese
and the Catalan tongues, and runs parallel to Pallars or the valley of
Esterri, and can be reached from the valley with some difficulty by
Espot and the high Portaron above it, or much more easily from Viella in
the Val d’Aran, by the high Port de Viella, which leads straight into
the Ribagorza and down to Bono. There are also entrances in and out of
Andorra, of which I did not speak, notably the Porte Blanche, which you
make from Porta in the Val Carol, a mile or two south of Porté. This
way involves two cols, one very high one, the Porte Blanche, another
lower one immediately after, the Port de Vallcivera. It is, however,
the shortest way from a French high road to Andorra the Old. There is
another way in and out of Andorra, very little used, by the Col de la
Boella from Ordino to the Val Farrera. All the Basque valleys besides
those I mention, and notably that of the Isaba, are places that should be
known, and of the passages over the range, which I have not dealt with in
detail, one, the road from St. Girons to Esterri by the Port de Salau,
will soon be an international highway. It presents no difficulties and no
very considerable interest. But if the traveller finds himself by some
accident in St. Girons with but a day or two in which to see Spain, here
is a very easy way of getting over into what is still one of the remotest
parts of that country.
[Illustration: THE CANIGOU]
VII
INNS OF THE PYRENEES
[Illustration]
There is nothing more necessary to the knowledge of a district if one
desires to enjoy travel in it, than to have some directions upon its
inns. I cannot pretend in what follows to give any complete list of
the inns which the traveller will find in the Pyrenees, but I will try
to do what the guide-books do not do, and that is to indicate what an
Englishman, especially one on foot, may expect in the different valleys.
The foreign guide-books rarely do this well: the Scotch and English
guide-books never; for the general phrases which they use about inns
and hotels leave one as full of doubt and terror as though nothing had
been said about them, and they always fail to speak good or evil of the
_people_, the _cooking_, and _the wine_—which are the three main things
one wants to hear about.
First then, as to the difference between the Spanish and the French side.
Though the Basques are one race upon either side of the frontier, and
the Catalans also, yet a single rule governs the whole length of the
chain, which is that French cooking and French hours are to be found to
the north of the political frontier, and Spanish to the south. This is a
matter in which the difference of Government has, in the course of some
generations of travel, produced a very marked effect. The Val d’Aran,
for instance, is geographically and racially French. Its river is the
Upper Garonne, there is no obstacle between it and the French plain, but
only one good descending road to unite them both; yet your experiences of
an inn in the Val d’Aran will in general resemble your experiences of an
inn beyond the mountains in the purely Spanish valley of the Noguera.
Similarly the neighbourhood of Saillagouse and all the French Cerdagne
is geographically and racially Spanish, the river running through it is
the Upper Segre (a tributary of the Ebro), and one road with no obstacle
at the frontier, unites the French to the Spanish portion of the valley,
yet the hours, habits, cooking, and everything in the inns of the
French Cerdagne are French, in those of the Spanish Cerdagne, Spanish;
and generally you must be prepared, when you cross the frontier, for a
different kind of hospitality.
The French rule of an inn is probably well known to all who will read
this. The coffee in the morning, the first meal at or a little before
mid-day, the second at six or seven at the latest, and so forth. In Spain
they will give you chocolate for your first meal. Your mid-day meal will
be at the same hour as the French, but your last meal much later: eight
is a usual hour. In France, if you ask for food at an odd time it will be
prepared for you; in Spain also but only with incredible delays, and you
find universally upon the southern side of the frontier, this difference
from the French that the table d’hôte or common meal is prepared only for
a fixed number of guests. Newcomers, even if they reach the place two
hours before the hour of the supper, have it separately cooked for them,
and will suffer a corresponding delay. Here is a national custom which
nothing can change, and which is as old as the hills. It was even once
universally the habit to have a separate little cooking pot for every
guest, and in certain inns that habit is still continued. It is in the
last degree inconvenient, and when one has pushed on to the end of some
very long day, to shelter and food, it is exasperating. One sees the
local people who have done nothing, eat a hearty meal; and one waits an
hour or two hours before one is served with a crust. But you can no more
change it than you can change any other national habit, and you must be
prepared for it on the Spanish side wherever you go. All the details of
the cooking are different too; notably these: that for some reason or
other, the Spaniard is careless of his oil, or perhaps prefers oil to
have a taste of carelessness about it: in places of rancidity. His wine
is quite different from the wine of the French. It comes up to him from
the hard plains of the Ebro; it has been kept in wine skins and tastes of
them. As a rule drink water with, or better still after, Spanish wine.
The French wine in these hills (save in the Roussillon) comes from the
plains of the Garonne, and has been kept in wood. It has the taste with
which we are familiar in this country; the Spanish wine has a roughness,
a strength, and a memory of goat’s skin, with which, until he comes to
Spain, no northern man can have any acquaintance at all.
It must not be imagined that Spanish accommodation is cheaper than
French; comfort for comfort, it is, if anything, a little dearer. But the
Pyrenees are cheap everywhere, save in one or two watering-places. Nearly
every inn upon either side, however small, can furnish you with a guide,
but not every inn with mules, and still less can you depend upon a horse
or a carriage, even in places which stand upon the few great highways. If
you must hire mules, you will always be able to find one in the village
where the inn stands, but, for some reason connected with their local
economics, the people of the inn are sometimes actively opposed and often
indifferent to your hiring one, and if they tell you that there is no
mule to be had (which is their way of opposing you) you must then saunter
out and bargain for one with some rival, but remember that you can always
get one: all these mountains are covered with herds and droves of mules.
Yet mules are expensive, from 1000 to 2000 francs to buy, or even more;
from 30 to 50 francs per day to hire, with the man who accompanies you.
Remember also, if you have a choice where to hire, that they are better
by far upon the Spanish than upon the French side. As for horses and
carriages, I will, when I speak of particular inns, mention the few
places where I know they can be hired.
A further difference between the French and Spanish side is that, on the
whole, an inn upon the Spanish side is less likely to be clean. This does
not mean that they are generally uncleanly, very far from it; the houses
of the whole of the Basque country on either side are excellently kept,
and this is generally true of Catalonia also, but the little hamlets, in
the highest valleys which are doubtful upon both sides, are usually worse
upon the southern. In every case, of course, you must ask the price of
rooms, they expect it, and it is best to ask the price of meals as well.
If you do not bargain in this manner, they think of you as of some one
who is deliberately throwing money away and they very naturally hasten
to pick it up. I remember one meal in the very unsatisfactory town or
village of Llavorsi, which was as unsatisfactory as the place itself, and
for which a violent Catalonian woman would have charged us the prices of
Paris because we did not bargain beforehand, and this, note you, in a
place where no one ever comes, which is on the road to nowhere, and which
does not see tourists perhaps, or even travellers, once in six months.
In every valley there is some one inn which, if you are wise, you will
choose, and which it is worth one’s while modifying one’s plans to visit.
I will set down those which I know, beginning as I have done throughout
this book, at the western end of the chain, and following it to the east.
In the Baztan, a Basque word for tail, for the valley resembles in shape
the tail of a rat, though the other _Bas_tans in the Pyrenees, out of
the Basque countries, derive their name from the Arabic word for garden,
Elizondo should be your halting-place. Here there are two hotels, one
old and one new, the old one in the very middle of the town on the high
road, the new one a little to the north, just off the high road. This
new hotel is kept by one Jarégui, and in the chief feature of all good
hotels (I mean the courtesy and zeal of the management) it is far the
best, not only in Elizondo, but in the whole valley. If you should wander
on to Pamplona, I can give no advice, but it is a large town where a
man may have pretty well what he wants according to the price he pays.
My own experience of it is of lodging in small eating-houses, not in a
regular hotel, but I understand that the Perla and the Europa are the
two best hotels, and of these two, people, as one travels, single out
the Europa. On the road from Pamplona to Roncesvalles, there is no good
stopping-place. At Erro, as I have said above, there is but one inn and
that a very bad one. Burguete is, however, a very pleasant village, and
the Hotel des Postes is praised by those who have stopped there. Unless
one is caught by night, or in some other way impeded, it is unwise to
eat or to sleep at Val Carlos, the contrast between French and Spanish
methods is nowhere more violent whether in the matter of cooking, or
of delay, or of wine, or of any other thing, than at this corner of
the frontier; but it is to be remembered that if you need a horse and
carriage you can always have it at Val Carlos for going on into France,
and at St. Jean Pied-de-Port you are in the best halting-place for the
valley of the Nive and the whole Labourd, just as Elizondo is the best
halting-place for the Baztan. St. Jean Pied-de-Port is large enough and
frequented enough to have some choice of hotels. You had much better
go to the best, which is the Central. The reason it will be worth your
while to do this is, that though it is the best hotel in a town to which
many rich people come, it is as cheap as it is good. It will always have
a carriage for you if you want it, it has a garage, and it is the best
centre from which to start upon any of the roads around; and if you
should be coming from the north and going south there is a public service
from this hotel through the pass as far as Pamplona.
In the next valley, that of the Soule (the river of which is the Saison,
and the chief town Mauléon) let Tardets be your head-quarters. It has one
of the most delightful inns in all the mountains, remarkable among other
things for having various names, like a Greek goddess. Sometimes it is
called the “Voyageurs,” sometimes the “Hotel des Pyrenees,” and it is
entered under the arcade of the north-west corner of the market square.
There you may dine in a sort of glass room or terrace overlooking the
river, and every one will treat you well. It is, I say, one of those
places that would make one hesitate to go on further into the hills the
same day, but if one does, one will find the unique inn at St. Engrace,
which I have already mentioned, one of the best that the smaller villages
have; it must always be remembered, of course, that these upland hamlets
give one nothing but their own fare, and usually a bedroom that is
reached through some other, but the beds here are good and the cooking
plain. This is the first house in the village on the right as you come
in, and as in Elizondo, Jarégui is the name. Remember that they have
various sorts of wine, and ask for their best, for even their best costs
very little, and their worst is not so good. In the valley between
Tardets and St. Engrace, before you leave the main road, you pass by the
hotel of Licq, “Hotel des Tourists.” Licq itself you leave to the right
beyond the river, but this hotel is built upon the high road. Here is a
good place for one meal, though there is no point in sleeping there, yet
if one is caught by some accident, one will find it comfortable enough; a
little bothersome in pressing one to take guides.
The next valley, the Val d’Aspe, and its prolongation on the Spanish
side, the Val d’Aragon, contain many inns, the more important of which
should be known before one approaches them.
In Oloron itself, there are two good hotels of which the Voyageurs
is perhaps the best, and there is, of course, every opportunity, in
such a town, of hiring horses and carriages. There is also, it must be
remembered, a public service twice a day up the pass as far as Urdos, not
expensive but very slow: no rail yet. It will be possible also at Oloron
to hire a pair of horses and a carriage if one wants one for several days
to go into Spain and back by way of the Val d’Assau.
There is no occasion to stop, whatever be your mode of travel, between
Oloron and Bédous, but should you take up your head-quarters at Bédous
(which, it will be remembered, is in the midst of the enclosed plain
which characterizes this valley), make the Hotel de la Paix your
head-quarters. You will be best treated there, and it is the best centre
for information upon the surrounding mountains. Accous is slightly
larger than Bédous, but it is off the road and therefore less used to
travellers; also it is less comfortable. So if you stop in this plain at
all, stop at Bédous.
Your next point will be Urdos, there is nothing of consequence between.