Baigts.—Ruins of twelfth-century castle and sulphurous springs.
Orthez.—Formerly the capital of Béarn, an historic town on the Gave de Pau, with (1) a fourteenth-century fortified bridge; (2) church of fifteenth century; (3) Tour Moncade, the keep of the castle built in 1242; (4) a few old houses in the Rue Bourg-Vieux.
After leaving Spain the architecture on this section of the route seems rather dull and the scenery lacking in grandeur, but this impression lasts only for a short time, for the road, after going north-east by east for a few miles, gets nearer to the great white ridge of the Pyrenees, and day after day, as one goes eastwards, the snowy peaks form a great rampart on the right. They make splendid backgrounds to nearly every view, and one is never weary of gazing into the rugged valleys that open up every now and then as the miles slip by.
On leaving Bayonne, one goes past the entrance to the railway-station on the left, and follows the road that goes off to the right for Orthez and Pau. For several miles there is little calling for comment. Here and there a fine umbrella pine stands in lonely dignity, and in the spring there is much pink-and-white fruit-blossom. The ploughs and the country carts are all drawn by bullocks.
The broad Adour is crossed on an iron bridge, and then, near Peyrehorade, the scenery improves. On market-days the narrow street of the little town is choked up with bullock-carts, and the spaces between them thronged with country-folk and soldiers, and the difficulty of getting the car through
No. 13. BIARRITZ TO PAU.
the tangle of traffic is so great that it is wiser to take the road going straight ahead at the bridge, passing the grey-towered castle which stands above the road.
The church of Peyrehorade is modern, and beyond the castle just mentioned and the ruins of another—the Château de Montréal, built in the sixteenth century on the banks of the Gave—there is little to delay one. All the way to Orthez the road keeps by the river known as Gave de Pau, which was the line of Marshal Soult’s retreat from Bayonne.