and our own, the end of the proper road over this chief pass and the
jumping-off place for the mule tracks and for Spain, has many inns for
its size—(it is no more than a hamlet)—but of these I will unhesitatingly
recommend the _Voyageurs_, which is one of the last houses on the left of
the village, having at the south end of it over the road a jolly little
terrace where one dines. The drawback of Urdos is that one _may_ get
bitten, and speaking of this the sovereign remedy is camphor, or rather
I should say, the sovereign preventive, for all animals that bite hate
the smell of camphor. But for that little drawback, Urdos is delightful
and nothing is pleasanter in Urdos than the Hotel de Voyageurs, also if
you go to this hotel you are following the line of least resistance, for
it is in some mysterious way related to the man who drives the coach.
Remember that Urdos is accustomed to every form of halt, and though it
is difficult to buy things there, there is a barn for motors—and also, I
believe, relays of horses for carriages.
Your next village on this main international road is Canfranc in Spain.
It is just over 14 miles off with nothing but a refuge and the pass of
the Somport between. The hotel is the Hotel Sisas, from which a public
coach starts for Jaca daily, still, I believe; the cooking is doubtful,
the wine so-so, and the people are a little spoilt, but they are very
ready with horses and used to hiring them, and you can always hire a
carriage or get a relay for Jaca, which is 16 miles further down by a
road with no steep hills, and for the most part nearly flat. At Jaca the
hotel (which I have already spoken of) is the Hotel Mur; it is excellent
in every way, clean, cheerful, and not too simple in its customs, with
various wines, and a knowledge of more than the Castilian tongue. The
mention of this leads me to add to what I said above that the language
stops very suddenly at this central frontier, or at least south of it.
There will be people who will understand Spanish almost anywhere in Béarn
because the local dialects are Spanish in character, but the common
French of Paris means nothing to the people of Aragon and Sobrarbe; you
may be in quite a big place and find no one for a long time who will
understand you, while in the small hotels and inns right up against the
frontier, they do not follow a word of the language.
Of the inns of Biescas I cannot speak from experience, nor of those of
Panticosa, though they say that the only useful one in Biescas is the
Hotel Chauces, while Panticosa has any number of places with such names
as “Continental” and “Grand,” and masses of lodgings as well, among which
I imagine the only choice is to take the best; nothing is really dear
there, except in the month between the middle of July and the middle of
August. Of Sallent, however, I can speak. There is but one inn in the
place; it has many names but is best known by the name of the man who
owns it, and his name is Bergua. It is an astonishing mixture. The owner
is wealthy and good natured, but you do not hear the truth about things
for it is coloured by self interest. The place is clean, but slow even
beyond the ordinary of a Spanish inn. The cooking is neither one thing
nor another, the wine is not bad. It is a place where you may spend one
night, but not two. You will leave it without enthusiasm, and without
regret.
Next, following the itineraries I have given, comes Gabas, and here is
as pleasant an inn as you will find in the whole world, it is called the
Hotel des Pyrenees, and of the several hotels it is the dearest. The
family of Baylou keep it and have inherited this soil for generations.
It is an ancestor of theirs that planted the delightful Mail outside and
set up the charming little fountain there. They are used in this house to
every sort of gentlemanly habit, they pay no attention to the clothes in
which one comes, and they understand all those who love to wander in the
hills. Everything is clean and good about the place, they will give one
well-cooked food in many courses at any hour. There is but one criticism
to make and that is in the matter of horses and carriages; these are
dear, and the good and the bad cost the same money, for there is here a
monopoly of the valley, and if you do not take their vehicle, you must
walk to the rail-head, 8 miles lower down. Also if for some reason you
must drive or get a relay of horses, the longer notice you give the
better, for there are few animals to be had.
Further down the valley is Eaux Chaudes, a dreary place, incredible from
the fact that it was here that much of the Heptameron was written! If
a man must stop there, let him; of the sad gloomy barracks, take the
largest and the dearest, which is the Hotel de France. Laruns, at the
foot of the valley, where again you are unlikely to stop, but where you
may be caught, has the Hotel des Touristes, where also horses and a
carriage may be hired, and whence the omnibus goes to Eaux Chaudes and to
Eaux Bonnes. This last place, like Panticosa, is a place one can make no
choice in, it is crowded with the rich, and where the rich have spoilt
things, the only rule I know is to plunge and take the dearest—which
is the Hotel des Princes—if you will not do that you must choose for
yourself.
The next valley, that of the Gave de Pau, has in it four towns, Lourdes,
Argelès, Cauterets, and Luz. Lourdes, like all cosmopolitan towns, is
detestable in its accommodation, and to make it the more detestable there
is that admixture of the supernatural which is invariably accompanied by
detestable earthly adjuncts. Were it not so the world would be perfect:
but it is so, and honestly one cannot say that any one hotel at Lourdes
is better than another, only here again if one is compelled to stop
for a night, one cannot do better than the best which is nominally the
Angleterre. Avoid the hotels that have Holy names to them, they are
usually frauds. If you go to Lourdes as a pilgrim, prefer the religious
houses (which take in travellers). If the Angleterre is too dear for you,
the Hotel de Toulouse is not to be despised; it should take you in at 25
to 35 francs a day. Argelès, up the valley, is a very different place,
it is a little hurt by the neighbourhood of Lourdes, and by the stream
of travellers who pour up and down its main road to Cauterets and to
the sights of Gavarnie. Nevertheless it remains a French country town,
and the fairly dignified capital of a district. The Hotel de France is
excellent and, by the way (a thing always to be mentioned when one is
speaking of hotels in the Pyrenees), it is ready at any time to furnish
horses, and has, of course, a garage. At Luz stand two hotels facing each
other on either side of the road, I cannot remember the names, or rather
I cannot remember which is which, but anyhow take the one on the right of
the road as you look up the valley, or as you come up from the station,
that is, the one upon the western side. They are polite, and that makes
all the difference in one’s relations with people whom one does not often
meet.
Gavarnie, overrun as it is (and it is hideously overrun), has a very
tolerable hotel, clean, and not too dear. The reason is that the people
who come to the place usually go away on the same day, and that therefore
there is some anxiety to please those who stop. Another inn, up under
the mountain, is not so much to be recommended. Of Cauterets everything
can be said—and much more—that was said of Eaux Bonnes, you are at the
mercy of a place which the rich choose to have ruined, and apart from
their vulgarity you will have that noise which accompanies them in all
their doings, this sort of place in the Pyrenees is luckily not common,
and when it is tolerable is tolerable in proportion as it is national.
Cauterets is almost as international as Lourdes, and for anyone using
the Pyrenees as I use them in this book, it would be madness to stop
there. Bagnères-de-Bigorre is better, though it is something in the same
line. It is better because it has something of a past and a history, and
is, like Argelès, the chief town of its district. The Hotel de Paris
is the best, but it is very expensive, and I believe, though I do not
know, that the Hotel des Vignes in the Rue de Tarbes is good among the
moderate places. But the rule holds here, as everywhere, that where rich
people, especially cosmopolitans, colonials, nomads, and the rest, come
into a little place, they destroy most things except the things that
they themselves desire. And the things that they themselves desire are
execrable to the rest of mankind.
Arreau, in the next valley, merits a more particular attention. It is
thoroughly French, and here you will find side by side with the expensive
places (for even Arreau has its Hotel d’Angleterre which, however, to
tell the truth, is not ruinous) a most delightful little place called the
Hotel du Midi, where sensible people go. I am speaking on the testimony
of others, but on good testimony. It is a place smelt out by the
infallible nose of the French professional class. It has a garage, and
will tell you where to get carriages, though I believe it has nothing but
an omnibus of its own. It is—or was—really cheap and good. But for some
odd reason this excellent house charges you extra for your coffee.
Right high up this valley is Vielle where there is one hotel, the Hotel
Mendielle, this is the one you must ask for if you find yourself caught
here, and it is just the place at which one might be caught if one got
into the wrong valley from a col in the Sobrarbe, or, if, in coming up
the Gave, one had not made way enough by night; I know nothing for or
against this hotel, and I believe it to be the only one. The little
village of Aragnouet, which is at the very end of the road under the last
precipices, has an inn of the quality of which I know nothing.
The next valley is that of Bagnères-de-Luchon. Now it might be imagined,
seeing what rich places are in the way of hotels, that Bagnères-de-Luchon
(being by far the richest place in the Pyrenees) would be hopelessly the
worst, and that, as nothing good could be said about Cauterets, and as
there was precious little choice in Eaux Bonnes, Luchon would be a place
to despair of in the matter of hotels, but on the contrary it is a place
to discuss.
Even if Luchon were as detestable as the Riviera, one would have to
come to it because it is the knot and reservoir of all mountain travel.
The valley strikes so deep into the hills, brings the railway so near
their summits, and is so exactly situated at the “fault” spoken of
so frequently in this book (the break in the Pyrenean line where the
landscapes and peoples of the chain meet) that it is difficult not to
pass through Luchon at one time or another during any length of days
passed in these hills. Even if you make a vow to clear Luchon, you may
find yourself caught in any one of twenty surrounding barbarisms with a
bad foot or no money, and compelled to set a course for this harbour.
Moreover Luchon is by no means the vulgar place its riches ought to
make it. The fashion for it was first made by reasonable people, many
Spaniards come and help to give the place its tone, and perhaps the very
extremity of evil corrects itself, and Luchon, being so crammed with
wealthy people, knows its own vices better than places just a little
less rich, and it is therefore more tolerable. At any rate the problem
of sleeping at Luchon is easily solved in July and August because all
prices are pretty much the same, and you cannot depend upon the printed
prices at all. For pension it is otherwise. There are fixed prices and
they are not exorbitant for such a place. A very clean, decent, rich
hotel is the Hotel d’Angleterre, where, if you stop some days, they will
charge you, I believe, about 40 francs a day. There is a place for poorer
people called the Hotel de l’Europe; all its prices are cheaper, but it
has this drawback that you get nothing national. It is clean and there
is a roof over your head, but you get neither French comfort nor French
discomfort, and you are paying a little less for things a great deal
worse, notably in the matter of food. The bold who fear nothing will go
and stop at the village little inn called the Golden Lion, which is near
the old church and existed before wealthy Luchon was born or thought
of. Here the bold will consort with Muleteers and the populace in some
discomfort. One of the best uses to which one can put Luchon is to eat in
it, and for sleeping to go outside and camp in the woods: and the best
place for the passer-by to eat is the Café Arnative on the main street;
its cooking is very good indeed, and the wine really remarkable; it is
such good wine that one wonders why they give it away, and every year as
one returns to the place one fears it may have ceased, but it continues.
Speak to the manager in English for he knows and loves that tongue, or
in Spanish or in French. In the use of the hotels and restaurants of
Luchon, however—always excepting the Golden Lion—remember that they are
snobbish about clothes, and that even two days in the hills puts you
well below the standard which they can tolerate. I confess that when I
have had to use Luchon, I have depended upon clothes which were waiting
for me at the station; and it is not difficult to use Luchon as a sort
of half-way house in this matter, leading the right life in the western
mountains, coming down to Luchon to find one’s luggage, dressing up,
plunging into worldly pleasure at Luchon, sending one’s luggage off again
to Ax or Perpignan, and then taking to the eastern hills for another bout
of poverty.
In the Val d’Aran, next to the valley of Luchon, there is but one place
where one is likely to stay, and that is in the town of Viella, which
is the capital; for the Val d’Aran is a small place, and there is no
advantage in stopping anywhere else. The Posada Deo is that which I know
best and is good but of course Spanish; the cooking is a sort of mixture
of Spanish and French, but the time you have to wait for it and in the
manner in which it is given you is wholly Spanish. The wine also (oddly
enough!) is Spanish. It ought, on the Garonne, to be of the Garonne, but
the customs interfere.
The Catalan valley, south and east of the Val d’Aran, the valley of
Esterri, has, in that town, a good little hotel, the Hotel Pepe. The
people are thoroughly Catalan in their love of money and therefore you
must bargain. Whatever you do, do not stop at any of the other places
in the valley, it is even better to go through a storm than to risk
Llavorsi, or worse still Escaló, but on the far side of the hill and of
the port called St. John of the Elms there is a most delicious inn, with
an old innkeeper of the very best, at Castellbo.
To return to the French side; if you go by train to St. Girons you may
likely enough change at Boussens, the station has not (or had not) any
buffet, but there was (and I hope is) an hotel opposite it where people
travelling by train ate; the cooking here is the best in the whole of the
Pyrenees, which is saying a good deal. At St. Girons itself there is not
only good cooking, but the wine which Arthur Young admired, and which was
well worthy of his admiration. Do not go to the best hotel (which is the
hotel of the Princes and of the Alpine Club), but to the next cheapest
which is called the Hotel de France; at least I have found this last to
be excellent and cheaper for its quality of food and drink and repose
than any other in all this chain. These things change quickly, what was
true so short a time ago may not be true now; but so, at least, I found
it.
In the valley of the Ariège it is always well to make Ax your
sleeping-place, for Ax, though there are waters and though the baths make
the prosperity of the place, is a very pleasant little town and the right
beginning for the mountains, whether you are going by the main road into
the Roussillon, or up the Ariège in the Carlitte group, or again over
the main range into Andorra. At Ax there are two rival hotels, the Hotel
de France, and the Hotel Sicre. The latter is a little cheaper though
both are cheap, and while I know the second one best I should recommend
the first; it will take you in as cheaply as any, and seems the more
carefully kept; both have garages. The Hotel Sicre suffers somewhat from
being directly attached to its Thermal Baths. If you are going to explore
the wild country of the Upper Aston, you must start from Cabanes lower
down on the railway. There is no need to sleep there. The valley above
it has some of the best camping places in the Pyrenees. But it is worth
knowing the name of the hotel, which is “Du Midi.” The whole place is, of
course, quite small and cheap.
On the high road into Roussillon choose Porté, primitive as it is, and
avoid _Hospitalet_ (on the hither side of the pass of Puymorens) like the
plague. Hospitalet and the village just before it, Merens, are for some
reason or other quite spoilt; I fancy tourists come up so far as these
two without going over the pass which they find too much trouble, and
that their coming and going has spoilt the two places: at any rate they
are detestable. They overcharge you and treat you with contempt at the
same time.
Porté, though it is but a few miles further on, is quite different. Here
is one rude inn, as cheap as the grace of God, and kept by the most
honest people in the world; Michet by name. It is thoroughly Spanish in
character (for remember that Porté, though politically in France, is on
the Spanish side of the main range, and that the pass just above is on
the watershed); the animals live on the ground floor, the human beings
just above them. You will never regret to have slept at Porté.
As you go on into the plain of the Cerdagne you will find a good inn
at La Tour Carol: not exactly enthusiastic in their greeting of the
traveller, but polite. It is quite a little place of only half a thousand
inhabitants, and you cannot expect much from it, but it is better than
Saillagousse where they are most unwilling.
Up the road to France from Saillagousse, at Mont Louis, is a hotel of
which I can speak but little because my own experience of it was late on
a holiday night when everything was very full, but it is substantial, it
is cheap and I have heard it praised. It is called the Hotel de France,
and it is a starting-point for the omnibus down to the rail-head at
Villefranche in the valley above which rise the flanks of the Canigou.
On the Canigou itself, standing upon a platform a few hundred feet below
the summit facing the Mediterranean and one of the greatest views in this
world, there is now an inn which you must not despise though it does
happen to be somewhat tourist. It is only open for the end of June, July,
August, and September, though one can sleep there at other times of the
year if one asks at Prades for the housekeeper; he comes down to that
town through the winter and is known there.
In Perpignan (by the way) go to the chief hotel, for the hotels of that
plain can be very vile when they try. This hotel is called “The Grand”
and it stands on the quay of the smaller river just within the old
fortifications. There is a delightful little restaurant in Perpignan
called the Golden Lion, it is well to order what one wants some hours
beforehand, and to take their own recommendation about wine. Perpignan is
so twirled and knotted a town that I can give no directions for finding
that Golden Lion, where it lies in its little back alley called the Rue
des Cardeurs, save to tell you that it is but 200 yards from your hotel,
and that the Rue des Cardeurs is the second on the _left_ as you walk
away from the main front of the cathedral; or again, the _first_ on the
left after you have crossed the Place Gambetta. Anyhow, Perpignan is a
small place and anyone will show you where this eating-house is, and it
is a good one. Down the Cerdagne in Spain, at Seo de Urgel, there are two
or three hotels, and one of the second class called the Posada Universal
or Universal Inn which merits its name; you will do well to stop there
for it has a pleasant balcony overlooking the valley, with vines trained
about it; and the people look after you.
As to the inns of Andorra your best plan is to stop in the capital, that
is, in _Andorra The Old_ itself, where the Posada is called the Posada
_Calounes_, and is quite a little and simple place. The entry into
Andorra, however, is not always easy. If you make it from the north, mist
may delay you, even on the grassy Embalire Pass, and may keep you for
hours on the higher crossings of the range, even when it does not defeat
you altogether. You may therefore have no choice but to stop at one of
the little villages; but it is a poor fate, for they are full of bugs and
fleas and appalling cooking, though the people are kindly enough. The inn
at Encamps is the only one with which I am myself acquainted among these
smaller places; there also it is vile.
I have omitted so far to speak of the inns in the Sobrarbe. That of
Venasque is the largest and most used to travellers. Like all Spanish
inns the life of the people is upstairs and the life of the animals
below. It is clean and seems to be continually full of people, for there
is quite a traffic to and from this mountain town. The inn has no name in
particular that I know of, but you cannot miss it. Guide books call it
“Des Touristes,” but I never heard anyone in Venasque give it that name.
You have but to ask for the Posada, however, and anyone will show it you.
It is in the first street on the left out of the main street as you come
into the town. As to the cost of it, it is neither cheap nor dear; but
(as I have said is common to the Spanish inns) it is a little on the
side of dearness. A friend of mine with three companions and two mules
found himself let in for over £3 for one night’s hospitality; on the
other hand, I myself, some years after, with two companions, passed two
nights and the day between with everything that we wanted to eat, smoke,
and drink, and we came out for under £2. The mules perhaps consume.
In all Sobrarbe there are but the inns of Bielsa and Torla (I mean in all
the upper valleys which I have described) that can be approached without
fear, and in Bielsa, as in Venasque and in Torla, the little place has
but one. At Bielsa it is near the bridge and is kept by Pedro Perlos; I
have not slept in it but I believe it to be clean and good. El Plan has a
Posada called the Posada of the Sun (_del Sol_), but it is not praised;
nay, it is detested by those who speak from experience. The inn that
stands or stood at the lower part of the Val d’Arazas is said to be good;
that at Torla is not so much an inn as an old chief’s house or manor
called that of “Viu,” for that is the name of the family that owns it.
They treat travellers very well.
This is all that I know of the inns of the Pyrenees.
VIII
THE APPROACHES TO THE PYRENEES
A traveller from England, on considering his approach to the Pyrenees,
must first appreciate the road heads or starting-places whence his
travels to the Pyrenees may be made, and it is convenient to regard
that one to which access can be had by rail. These points are eleven
in number—St. Jean Pied-de-Port, Mauléon, Oloron, Laruns, Argelès,
Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Arreau, Bagnères-de-Luchon, St. Girons, Foix, and
Villefranche, which last is the highest point to which the rail will take
one from Perpignan.
One can get nearer the main range by light railways in certain places.
Thus from Mauléon a steam tramway will take one some miles nearer the
hills, to Tardets. From Lourdes the train goes up the valley several
miles, and light railways go to Cauterets and Luz, and from Foix there
is a considerable reach of rail, as far as Ax-les-Thermes, all up the
valley of the Ariège, from which lateral valleys on every side enter the
high mountains. Nevertheless, if one knows how to approach these eleven
stations, and something of the hours of arriving at them, the slight
extensions in the three cases named can easily be looked up, and there is
no need to burden these pages with them.
Of these eleven, the first four, St. Jean Pied-de-Port, Mauléon,
Oloron, and Laruns, belong to the western section of the range, and are
approached from Bordeaux. Another four, Arreau, Bagnères-de-Luchon, St.
Girons, and Foix belong to the central and eastern section of the range,
and are approached by way of Toulouse, while the two intermediate ones,
Lourdes (and its extension up the valley) and Bagnères-de-Bigorre, may,
according to the convenience of trains, be approached with equal facility
from either direction.
There remains Villefranche, the chief station under the Canigou, and the
centre for the extreme eastern end of the range. The approach to this
short and distant part of the Pyrenees is through Perpignan.