The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

The road over the Somport is the best international road between France and Spain. It is completely finished, and yet it is sufficiently modern to present every advantage for travel. On the French side it has been complete since the time of Napoleon III; on the Spanish side its highest stretches have been finished only in recent years. It is perfectly possible to take the whole road from Oloron to Jaca, and so back by Sallent and Laruns to Oloron again in one day, but it would be a foolish thing to do, and if the ascents try the machine, it might mean going through some of the best scenery of the Val d’Ossau in the dark. It is best therefore to break the journey at Jaca, and no number of hours spent in that delightful town are wasted. The first part of the road—the first 16 miles or so—are nearly level. It is interesting to see the straight line which the Roman track makes for the gate of the hills at Asasp. The pass seems to invite the road: it is the most obvious gap in the whole Chain.

The rise, as I have said, is slight. The river, which is rather less than 800 feet above the sea at Oloron, is not 1400 above it at Bédous; in the whole 20 miles or so, you rise but 600 feet. There are occasional hills, but they are insignificant, and the general impression is that of following the floor of the valley. When, however, one has passed through the great enclosed plain of Bédous, and left behind him its chief town, Accous, one passes through a narrow gorge, which rises continually to Urdos about 12 miles on. The rise is gradual, however, and never steep. It was at Urdos that the old valley road used to stop, until Napoleon III continued it to the summit of the pass, and for 7 miles above Urdos there are continual and steep rises. The pass, however, is low (it is but slightly over 5000 feet) and the last 2 miles before the summit are fairly flat. From the summit the road runs down on the Spanish side a little steeply, but with no really difficult gradient, and after about 2 miles of this, where the Canal Roya falls in and forms the river Aragon, the road takes on quite an easy slope. Indeed, the escarpment is so much steeper upon the French side that Jaca, though it is 25 miles away, stands no lower than Urdos close by just over the ridge. Rather less than half-way between the summit and Jaca is the little town of Canfranc. It would be a pity to stop there, the food is doubtful, and so is the wine, and if one wants to breakfast on the journey, it is better to make an early breakfast at Urdos.

After Canfranc the mountains open out and you are fairly in the lowlands; 17 miles on, through a wide valley, you come to Jaca.

Your hotel at Jaca will be the Hotel Mur, as good and comfortable a one as you will find in northern Spain. From Jaca you may go on to Pamplona westward, or down further south into Spain by Saragossa. As you enter the northern gate of Jaca, you will have gone exactly 57 miles from Oloron; a short distance I know, but I repeat, it is foolish to go to Jaca and not to spend your time in so charming a place. Moreover, the run back has no opportunities for repose.

The return journey is first eastward by the Guasa road, which has (or had, when I went along it last), a most indifferent surface in parts, and you follow this, with a railway never far from the road, some 10 or 12 miles, until at Sabiñanigo the railway turns down south and in much the same neighbourhood (but north of the line) the road turns up north and reaches Biescas (a smaller town than Jaca), in about another 8 miles. After that it begins to climb. At Sandinies the road bifurcates. That on the right goes up to Panticosa; crossing the river by the stone bridge of Escar, your road goes straight on up the valley and climbs up to Sallent for 3 or 4 miles.

I confess I have never been over this bit, but I am assured that it is practicable for a motor, and I have indeed seen a motor which had come round from Panticosa. There is nothing at Sallent that you can call habitable, though as motors live there it is to be presumed that there are ways of looking after them. You will do well to volunteer at the guard room (which is on the left of the road as you leave the town) information as to your whereabouts. It has happened to me not to be allowed to leave a Spanish town without all manner of formalities, while on other occasions it has happened to me to walk through one and over into France without a question being asked.

From Sallent the new road goes up with rather steep gradients at first, zigzagging up the side of the Peña Forata. The old road, a mere track, may be seen cutting off the great bends as one climbs the mountain. About a mile from the frontier, where the steepness of the road grows level, is a post of police where they may or may not bother you; they bothered me on one occasion, and on another they let me alone. From the summit, which is some 12 kilometres and more—say 8 miles by road—from the town of Sallent one goes down first gently, then steeply, with the Pic-du-Midi d’Ossau, a vast isolated rock, right in front of one, and one is accompanied by a torrent upon one’s left—which is the Gave d’Ossau. The road follows the right bank of this for some 7 miles, crosses over to the left bank, and 3 miles after this bridge reaches Gabas, a tiny hamlet, where is one of the most delightful hotels in the Pyrenees. Gabas is the highest inhabited point in this valley, and is just the same distance from the summit that Sallent is upon the other side, that is, between 8 and 9 miles. From Gabas down to Laruns the road continues all the way downhill, a matter of another 7 or 8 miles, and from Laruns back to Oloron, through Buzy, is a lowland road with a flat surface. The whole round from Oloron back to Oloron again is somewhere between 125 and 150 miles.

There is but one other circular journey for which I can vouch that it can be made in a motor car; it is the journey from Bayonne to Pamplona, by way of the low passes on the Atlantic side of the range, and back again through Roncesvalles.

You find yourself at Bayonne as a starting-place. The main road into Spain and towards Madrid goes along the sea, much as the railway does, and bears westward, but there is another road through the tangle of Basque mountains, or rather those hills which between them make up French and Spanish Navarre, and this road is the direct road to Pamplona. It is a short day’s journey of some 60 miles at the most when all the windings are taken into account, and there are no really high passes or steep gradients throughout. You leave Bayonne by the main straight road which leads out south-west towards Biarritz, but, immediately outside the fortifications, you turn to the left along the high land above the valley of the Nive. A mile and a half out you cross over the main line and immediately afterwards take the road to the left which leads you to Arcangues. There are many branch roads on this little bit, which is well under 4 miles, but the chief road is plain. At Arcangues, just after you have left the church on the right, you turn to the left, still following the high road, and in some 2 miles you strike the forest of Ustaritz, the confines of which were for so many centuries the sacred centre of the Basque people. Through this forest there is no doubt of the way. The road leading to the town of Ustaritz, which goes off to the left in the midst of the forest, comes in at so sharp an angle that one would not be tempted to take it, and the high road goes on, without any bifurcations, to St. Pée. You have, by this time, crossed the low watershed between the basin of the Adour and that of the Nivelle, upon which river St. Pée stands at some 13 or 14 miles from Bayonne.