The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

There is perhaps an exception to be found in the case of the Bonaigo, but this pass also presents difficulties to wheels upon its western side, and in the lower valley at the gorge.

In general the crossings of the Pyrenees everywhere display certain characters rare or absent in other ranges, which are first that they are very numerous (a feature due to the absence of snow), secondly, that they are very high, thirdly, that they hardly ever involve any true climbing, and fourthly, that they nearly always involve some considerable care on the part of the wayfarer and are somewhere dangerous either upon the northern or the southern side.

This can be well illustrated by a particular example in the few miles between the Pic D’Anéu and the Canal Roya. Here there is a range no part of which descends much below 2100 metres nor rises much above 2300. There are two distinct saddles where a man can cross on foot, and neither is appreciably lower than the peaks of the range, which are but lumps of rock a little higher than the grassy ridges from which they spring. Any man knowing the country and with a fairly good head could trust himself to half a dozen places westward of the two which I have mentioned (which are called the Col D’Anéu and the Port of Peyreget). Nevertheless the easiest of them, the Port de Puymaret, easy as it is upon the French side, gives some pause upon the Spanish. The traveller finds himself, once over the crest, within a few yards of a rocky edge, beyond which there is apparently nothing but air, and, thousands of feet beyond, the precipices of the Negras. If he will approach that rocky edge he will see that everything below it is easily negotiable, and when he has once reached the floor of the Spanish valley beneath he will perhaps wonder why it seemed so difficult from above. In truth it is not really difficult at all, but the scramble looks dangerous, and it is one which most men, other than regular climbers, would think twice about when they first saw it from above. If all this is true of the Peyreget, it is still more true of the other crossings in its neighbourhood to the right and to the left.

Were the Pyrenees surmountable at comparatively few passages, these would have been so thought out and perhaps improved as to make them regular and well-known passes, which the traveller could easily deal with. It is the very number of the crossings which add to their difficulties. The people who live upon either side are indifferent in their choice among so many difficult passages, and with the exception of one or two quite modern made roads with which I shall presently deal, there are some hundreds of Cols and Ports all having in common a character of difficulty, and few naturally so much more easy than their neighbours as to concentrate travel upon them.

This feature may be summed up in the expression that the crest of the Pyrenees is rather one long ridge slightly serrated than (as in the case of most other ranges) a succession of high mountain groups separated by low saddles.

Of all the accidents that strike one in connexion with the crossing of these hills nothing strikes one more than the accident of time. A Port is always a day and a long day. Here and there quite exceptionally there may be food and shelter upon either side within six or seven hours one from the other; but as a rule if you propose to sleep under cover upon either side, your effort will demand a long summer’s day, and it is best to look forward to a night camp upon the further side of the range.

Before continuing the description of these passages, or any rules by which one should be guided in attempting them, it may be well to speak for a moment of the few practised and conventional tracks.

First of these come, of course, the high roads. At present, over the frontier, these are but four in number (for the low passes to the east of the Canigou may be neglected), Roncesvalles, the Somport, the Pourtalet, and the Cerdagne. Of these the Pourtalet has been but recently opened, and was just before the war still in process of being widened upon the French side. Moreover, it is so nearly neighbouring to the Somport (there is but 8 miles between them), that it hardly affords a true alternative crossing. A fifth high road across the watershed is that which crosses it at Porté from the valley of the Ariège into the Cerdagne, but this road is essentially a lateral one. It lies wholly in French territory, it joins the French road through the Cerdagne, and you cannot go by it down the valley of the Segre. It only crosses the watershed on account of an accidental divergence of this to the south, in the upper valley of the Ariège.

These four carriage roads are all that lead, at present, over the political boundary of the Pyrenees. Another is in construction over the Port of Salau, but it is not finished upon the Spanish side. The French desire several others to go over by the Macadou, Gavarnie, etc., but their own preparations are not completed and the Spanish are not even begun.

Apart, however, from these high roads, which are carefully graded, possess an excellent surface, and are traversable by any vehicle, there are a certain number of crossings which travel has rendered familiar, and whose facility is well known. Thus, the Embalire from the Hospitalet on the upper Ariège into the upper Segre in Andorra is a perfectly easy slope of grass, though high. Again, the Bonaigo, though there have been natural difficulties in the lower valley to be surmounted, and though there is not even a track across it, is a perfectly easy roll of grassy land barely 6000 feet high. A high road leads as far as Esterri on the Spanish side; another goes from France on the northern side, right up the valley of the Garonne, beyond Biella, to the paths at the very foot of the pass, so that the gap between the two highways is but a few miles in length.