The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

The 1/320,000 military map will not be of great use to the traveller. It can only show him the main roads if he is motoring or cycling, and present him with a general view of the country for which the clearer 1/200,000 map will serve his purpose better.

The 1/80,000 military map is the best for minute details, and if a man desires to ramble off and explore some special districts of this great range, it is the 1/80,000 map which will be of most use to him, though its value will be supplemented and greatly extended by using it in conjunction with the colour 1/100,000 map of the Ministry of the Interior or Home Office.

This last, as the reader will have seen, is the staple map, upon which every form of travel depends. If no other be purchased, this at least is always indispensable.

It is well here to summarize briefly certain points in the reading of this map, which do not immediately appear on one’s first acquaintance with it.

First, the map is on too small a scale to show a certain number of features, which, though unimportant in the general landscape, are essential to the traveller on foot. This is true of rocks, for instance; open rock, extending over a considerable surface, will always be marked, but hidden ledges, especially small ones, are more often not marked, and this may lead to disaster if one trusts the map too exactly. For instance, in the sheet numbered xi. 37, a range will be seen rising to the left of the main road, which bisects the map from north to south: I mean the range running from the Spanish frontier to the Pic-du-Ger. This ridge is intersected by two profound valleys, and the whole of it is a mass of greater or smaller limestone ledges, more or less masked in the density of the forests. Yet it is impossible to indicate these on such a scale, save here and there by sharp hatching. These limestone ledges are in this particular case such, that unless one knows the paths extremely well, it is impossible to cross the ridge at all, but one would have no idea of that from merely consulting the map. On the other hand, every rivulet, however small, is distinctly marked, and that is something of a guide when one has tried to ascertain one’s position in a valley. This map has a further advantage of marking in the clearest way the paths by which the various ports are approached, and after a considerable use of it in many places, I can say that when you have lost the path, the indication afforded you by the 1/100,000 map is invariably right—upon the French side. However unreasonably the line seems to acting upon the map, if it lies to the left of a stream, or beneath a particularly clearly marked rock, then it is to the left of that stream, or beneath that rock that you must cast about if you want to find it, and if you find another path in another direction, you may be certain it is but a random track, which will mislead you, however clearly it may appear for the moment. When, in first using these maps, my companions and I neglected such information, it invariably led to trouble. For instance, in the lower crossings of the Sousquéou, the map gives the path everywhere on the north, or right bank of the stream. There is a spot just before the first rocky “gate” of this ravine where all indication of further travel upon the right bank disappears, and on the contrary a fine-made path crosses over by a strong bridge to the further or left bank. We thought the map must be in error, and crossed by the bridge, with the result that we spent a whole day cut off by a bad spate from the further side, and were for some hours in peril; for the bridge once crossed, this false path disappeared within half a mile. If we had pinned ourselves to the map, kept to the north bank, and cast about in circles, we should have found the path again but a hundred yards or so further on, running precisely as it was indicated on the survey. The importance of the 1/100,000 map in thus giving all tracks accurately will hardly appear to the reader unused to the Pyrenees, but it will be seen clearly enough when we come later to speak of travel upon foot in the mountains.

It is a defect of the 1/100,000 map that heights, though accurately marked, cannot always be as accurately referred to the exact spots standing near the figures. This is because the heights are marked in pale blue ink, and the ambiguity is accentuated by that absence of contour lines which is the chief fault of the series. The method of marking is to point a small blue point close to the figures, and this dot marks the exact spot to which the figures refer. Where the figures are printed in a white space, and where there are no other features to interfere with them, this small blue spot is plain enough, but where they come upon woodland or steep shading, or other print, it is almost impossible to discover the dot. Thus, for instance, in the xi. 37 sheet to which allusion has just been made, a little lake will be found right upon latitude 42° 50′, just before its intersection with longitude 2° 40′. The height of this lake is given as 2170 metres, and the small blue point to which that altitude exactly refers is unmistakably marked at the southern extremity of the lake; but immediately to the right of those very figures, one of the highest peaks of the Pyrenees, the Bat Lactouse, marked 3146 metres, presents no point of which one can be certain. The frontier happens to cross this peak, and the little blue spot has got lost in the chain of black dots marking the frontier and in the print of the name of the mountain.

As a general rule, however, if you are in doubt as to what a figure may refer to, you are pretty safe in referring it to a peak, rather than to a pass or a group of houses in the neighbourhood. I have said that the accuracy of the map is undoubted for the French side; it is less certain upon the Spanish, where indeed its accuracy is not guaranteed. It is the best map to use upon the Spanish side (save for that restricted district over which Schrader’s contour map applies), but do not, upon the Spanish side, take the map against the evidence of your senses, as you will be wise always to do upon the French side. The map is notably wrong upon the Spanish side where unfinished works are concerned; it is not revised with the same frequency and care as upon the French side; for instance, the big new road from Sallent up to the French frontier goes in long winding zigzags, which make the total distance between eight and nine miles. The 1/100,000 map marks it in dots as though it were not finished, makes it far straighter than it is, and thus reduces the distance by nearly half.

Finally, the 1/200,000 map gives the best bird’s-eye view of the whole district, and is the only one showing contours, and penetrating further upon the Spanish side than any other. It will be my advice to those who desire to take a walking tour of some length in various parts of the range, to equip themselves with the whole set of the 1/200,000 maps (5 sheets), with the whole of the 1/100,000 map, but only with such of the 1/800,000 (the uncoloured map of the Ministry of War) as cover small districts of the nature of which one is in doubt. Those, on the other hand, who purpose spending their time in one or two valleys only, should, without fail, purchase the sheets of the 1/100,000 survey covering that district, and would do very well to add to these all the corresponding sheets of the 1/80,000 survey.

With these remarks, most that can be usefully told to my readers with regard to the maps of the Pyrenees has been told them, but perhaps a few final notes will not be without their use, thus: The English traveller must always remember that none of these maps comes up to the English one-inch Ordnance for accuracy and detail—the scale forbids this. Next, let him remember that the dates of revision of each map will differ, as do the dates of revision of ordnance maps in every country. For instance, I have before me, as I write, the 1/200,000 of Luz, purchased in this year (1908); no date of revision is attached to it, but the new road (which is at present an excellent carriage road, one of the best in Europe, up the Gallego to the French frontier) is marked, at first as a lane, afterwards as a mule track. On the 1/100,000 (Laruns sheet), purchasable this year, the new road is marked as existing for traffic, but not fully completed beyond a point about three miles from the frontier, and its true form is not given but merely indicated. It is evident that these sheets were revised at different times (the Laruns sheet bears a date six years old), and that we must always take the later of any two impressions, if we can obtain it. The highways of the Pyrenees upon the French side especially, both by road and by rail, are being extended with such rapidity that every year makes a difference to the accuracy of the information conveyed.

It remains to enumerate with their titles the maps covering the district: in England they may be most easily obtained from Messrs. Sifton & Praed, The Map House, St. James’s Street. This firm provides the 1/200,000 for the whole chain of the Pyrenees range mounted on canvas, the most useful map perhaps for motoring and cycling. Any sheet of the 1/100,000 can also be obtained from them, as all are kept in stock, but by far the most convenient form in which to carry them is to have them folded in the stiff cover issued by the French Government: to get them in this form, a few days’ notice in London will be needed. From the same firm the military maps can be procured in a similar manner, but I do not know whether all are kept in stock as a regular thing.