The main lateral road from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, along the base of the Pyrenees, links up all the towns upon the plains; it joins Bayonne to Pau, Pau to Tarbes, Tarbes to St. Gaudens, and so on through St. Girons, Foix, and Quillan to Perpignan: this may be called the Lower Road. The upper road has been but recently completed. It is made up of sections, some of which are old highways, some links quite newly built, and the characteristic of the whole is that it skirts as nearly as possible the crest of the main chain, crossing at some places very high passes over the lateral ridges, and everywhere keeping right up against the high summits of the range. The whole line runs from Perpignan over the Col de la Perche up the Val Carol and over the Puymorens to Ax, Tarascon, and St. Girons. At St. Girons, it is compelled by the conformation of the country to touch the lower road, but it leaves it at once to pass from Fronsac to Luchon; thence through Arreau, Luz, Argelès, Laruns, Oloron, and Mauléon—all the high mountain towns—to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, and thence back again to Bayonne.
The four roads over the ridge into Spain lie all of them on the western side of the hills. They are, first, the road through the Baztan valley, which connects Bayonne with Pamplona; secondly, the Roman road over Roncesvalles, 12 or 15 miles to the east of this, which used to be the high road between Bayonne and Pamplona before the Baztan road was built, and which was during all history the westernmost road of invasion and communication between Gaul and Spain; thirdly, the road which goes over the Somport, which was also a Roman road and the chief one, uniting Saragossa with the French plains; fourthly, a road parallel to this and not 10 miles east of it, running over the Pourtalet Pass and joining the Saragossa road lower down. No other roads cross the range from France into Spain until one reaches the Mediterranean, and all these four lie within the first westernmost third of the Pyrenees.
It would be quite easy to open other roads which should unite the last of the Spanish highways with the first of the French, notably over the easy pass of Bonaigo, where 20 miles of work would be enough, and through the Cerdagne, where there are no engineering difficulties. One such road is now in process of completion between Esterri and St. Girons over the pass of Salau. Another, which was begun from the valley of the Ariège into Andorra, was abruptly stopped, and it will probably never be completed. There are some half-dozen other places, where a road could cross and where the French are building their side of it: but the Spaniards are reluctant to meet them.
Of the roads of the third kind, roads running up the valleys but not attempting to cross the mountains, one may say that on the French side every valley has one or more good roads, the one drawback to the use of which in a motor is that you are compelled, unless you can take a cross road from one high valley to another high valley, to go back by the way you came into the plain.
Not only has every valley its highway leading to the very foot of the main range, but often the bifurcations of the valley will have roads as well. Thus along the valley of the Nive you can go in a motor not only to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, but also right up the eastern valley to a country-side called the “Baigorry” as far as Urepel; along the next Basque valley to the east, you can go from Mauléon in the plains right up into the hills as far as Larrau, but you cannot go to Ste. Engrace, where the valley splits, because the track thither, though a good one, will not take wheels. You can go up the branch valley from Oloron as high as Aritte, and the main road up the Val d’Aspe (which is that leading to Jaca by the old Roman way), has lateral branches, one taking you to Lourdios, the other across the foot hills to Arudy and the Val d’Ossau. The valley of Lourdes has a road which, with the exception of the roads over the passes, goes nearest to the main watershed. I mean the road to Gavarnie; and the Val d’Aure, which comes next to the westward, has a road going as far as Aragnonette, almost as close to the last cliffs as Gavarnie is; and there is an embranchment to the east which takes one to the very foot at the Hôpital of Rivanagon in one of the loneliest parts of the hills. The road to Bagnères de Luchon is carried some miles beyond that town, as far as the Hospitalet, which stands at the foot of the pass into Spain. The road to Viella in the Val d’Oran goes on up to within a mile or two of the pass of Bonaigo. A road from St. Girons takes one up the valley of the Lez as far as Sentein, which, like Gavarnie, lies right under the main chain, while the road from the same town up the main valley of the Sallent goes up to the watershed itself, and is being constructed to cross it, and to afford (over the pass of Salau) one more badly needed passage into Spain. The valley of the Ariège has a road all along it, almost to the sources of that river. It is continued through the Cerdagne and down the valley of the Tet into the Roussillon.
There is not a main valley on the French side of the Pyrenees which has not its great carriage road, and most of the lateral valleys have now the same kind of communications. The journey up them is nearly always of the same kind, save the few which are prolonged to carry over the watershed into Spain. There is the succession of two or three enclosed plains or jasses after one has left the plains, the sharp pitch up to one flat, and then another, through short but steep rocky gorges, till we reach the little terminal mountain village, sometimes not more than a group of three or four buildings, lying under the last escarpment, and in sight of the frontier ridge above it. Of this terminal sort was Urdos until Napoleon III pushed the road out beyond it into Spain; Gabas, until the Republic did the same with the road there; and of this sort still an old Hospitalet, Sentein in the Val d’Aure, and though it is in a state of transition, for the road is now being pushed beyond it, of this sort is Gavarnie. Little places almost as old as our race, with no history and no national memories, but with immemorial traditions, rooted as deep as the mountains, were brought into the life of our time by that new activity of the French, which is to many foreigners so hateful, to many others so marvellous.
Plan L.