On the Spanish side there are no roads of this kind penetrating the valleys except the incomplete road to Isaba from Pamplona by way of the Val d’Anso, and the short stretch from Sandinies to Panticosa.
A road is being made up the Val d’Anéu, but it is not yet finished, and a road goes just so far up the broad Segre valley as Seu d’Urgel.
All the other valleys have mule tracks alone.
The general scheme of existing roads in the Pyrenees is roughly as upon the map on previous page, where it will be seen that much the greater length of the chain is impassable to a wheeled vehicle.
Motoring sets a standard for every other form of wheeled traffic, I will therefore first speak of this kind of travel. The best road to take with a motor, if one wishes to obtain a general idea of the Pyrenees, is the Lower Road (by Tarbes and Foix) from Bayonne to Perpignan; one may then come back again from Perpignan to Bayonne by the upper road, many parts of which are of very recent construction and which goes right through the highest part of the chain across the main lateral valleys of the Pyrenees. Such a round—about 500 miles altogether—gives one from far and from near the whole of the French Pyrenees: from the first one sees the chain as a whole before one: by the second one mixes with its deepest valleys.
The first day’s run from Bayonne had best end at Tarbes; it is a town central with regard to the chain, and it is also a very pleasant place to stop at under any conditions; not cosmopolitan like Pau, and not in a hole and corner like Foix.
The lower road from Bayonne to Tarbes runs through Orthez, Puyoo, and Pau, and if one starts early, Pau is a good halting-place for the middle of the day. This part of the road is, during the whole of its length or nearly the whole of it, a rolling road of the plains with no striking points of view save in where it tops a slight rise. It first follows but runs above and north of the valley of the Adour below it, next descends after the first 20 miles or so to cross the Adour, and so comes to Peyrehorade, the first town (and railway station) upon its course. During all this first part of the run one has sight after sight of the range which stretches out eastward before one to the south rising higher as it goes; and one sees at first before one upon the horizon, later abreast of one and due south, the pyramid of the Pic d’Anie, which is the first of the high peaks.
From Peyrehorade to Pau, between 40 and 50 miles, the road goes through Orthez along the valley of the Gave de Pau, for the most part following the river bank and allowing but few sights of the range; but at Pau itself it rises on to the high plateau of the town whence the most famous general view of the Pyrenees is spread before one.
From Pau there are two roads to Tarbes; for curiosity and for general travel it is the road round by Lourdes which is generally taken, and that is during the whole of its length a lowland road though it runs among the foot hills; but the better road on such a drive as I am describing is the direct northern road, which, after it has climbed on to the plateau of Vignan, goes up and down steep small ravines until it comes down again upon the main valley of the Adour and the plain of Tarbes.