The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

You turn to the left in St. Pée by the road that leaves that village due south, and take the left-hand road again at the first bifurcation, which is immediately outside the village; then follow steadily up the valley of the river. There is but one doubtful place, not 3 miles out of St. Pée, where you choose the left of two roads, but even that is not really doubtful, for your road obviously follows the stream, which it there crosses by a bridge, while the right-hand road goes over into the hills. About 3 miles more from this bifurcation you cross the frontier, and thence onwards there is no doubt of your way. The high road goes over the Pass of Ostondo, or Maya, quite low, and brings you into the Basque valley of Baztan. Come on down through Elizondo, a most delightful town of this people, and climb up continually thence (taking the left-hand road at Irurita, one and a half miles from Elizondo) until you come to yet another pass, called the “Port La Betal” or “Vetale” in French, some 2000 feet or more in height. After crossing this col you are in the basin of the Ebro, and the road thence into Pamplona is a straight stretch all the way to the plain, which appears suddenly spread out as you round a corner, a fine sight.

The old road back from Pamplona into France over Roncesvalles, the road which the armies of Charlemagne took, and which the Romans built, went first east and west, and was the first portion of the great road to Saragossa. It met the road over the mountains and branched north towards Roncesvalles. There is a modern road which cuts off this corner, and joins the Roncesvalles road quite close to the hills. It crosses three low lateral ranges by very easy gradients, and has an excellent surface. It takes one through Larrasoaña, Erro, and finally, without any doubtful cross roads or turnings, falls into the old Roman road, just below Burguete.

Here you must make ready for one of the greatest sights in Europe. You are on a very high upland plain, something like the glacis of a fortification. The last crest of the Pyrenees stands like a long wall of white cliffs, which seems low and familiar, because you are so very high up on this sloping plain. You go through a fine northern-looking wood which might be in England, with great spacious clumps of beeches and broad glades. You pass the monastery, and then go up through the hamlet of Roncesvalles, quite an insignificant few hundred feet of road; you see a ruined chapel upon your right (ruined quite recently by fire, and yet no one has taken the trouble to rebuild it!), then suddenly you are at the summit, and a profound trench opens sheer below you and points straight to the French plains, miles and miles away.

It is here that Roland died, in the valley below.

From this summit the roads run down directly on the northern side of the watershed, but still politically in Spain, till you come to the last Spanish town, Val Carlos, where you will do well to ask for papers permitting you to leave the country. These papers are obtained from the Corregidor. Two miles on you cross the river into France, and four miles further you are in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, where there is good food and promptitude and news and all that is necessary to man.

From St. Jean Pied-de-Port the main valley road takes you, without any doubtful turnings, down the river and the railway, now on one side, now on the other, all the way to Bayonne. There is but one place where the traveller might be a little confused, and that is some 12 miles or more from St. Jean Pied-de-Port, where the road, which has been running right along the railway and the river for miles, turns sharp over to the right to reach a village called Louhossoa; but this village (which is but a mile from the river) once reached, everything is plain again. Turn to the left at the church, where the road goes straight back to the river (a matter of 2 miles), crosses it, and goes along the heights on the left bank, all the way back to Bayonne.

The whole of this circle is about equivalent in distance to that which I have described round from Oloron to Jaca, and back again round by Sallent; and, as in the former case, you will do well to break the journey in Spanish territory and at Pamplona, for though this makes two short days in a motor, they are days in which you ought to see what you can see. For my part also, I would stop at Elizondo, to eat and to watch the place; but I would not eat at the hotel in the main street, where the people are cruel and grasping, but rather at the cheap and genial place kept by one Jarégui.

Besides these two circular journeys upon good roads, which a man can take across the main range, there is the variation of them that can be made by taking the valley road from Pamplona to Jaca, a journey of at least 70 miles or more. I know that it can be done, for I have seen motors that had done it, and for all that I know the road may even be excellent: or it may be very bad—I am not acquainted with it. Such as it is, it takes you all along Aragon and the parallel outer ranges of the Spanish Pyrenees.

I have mentioned another extension to the roads described, the run down to Saragossa from Jaca. This of course takes you right out of the Pyrenean country, but the first half of it at least is in the hills, and no journey shows you better the nature of the outlier mountains on the Spanish slope of the main range. Off the direct road one may make a long elbow eastward to reach Huesca, which was St. Laurence’s town. The surface is good, and there are few steep gradients, though there is a long climb out of Jaca itself. From Jaca to Saragossa, by way of Huesca, along this road, is just about 100 miles, and, as far as Huesca at least, it provides a complete knowledge of the mountain types upon the Spanish side of the watershed. Nor is this typical scenery anywhere finer than in the splendid gorges and chimney-rocks of Riglos, nor is any one of the parallel ranges more characteristic than the high Sierra de Guara, which stands up above the burnt plain of Huesca, 30 miles out from the main ridge, quite separate from the general range, and yet reaching a summit of nearly 6000 feet.

All the roads suitable for motoring, especially in such a district as this, are suitable for bicycling also. I say “especially in such a district as this,” because the identity between motoring and bicycling roads is more striking in the Pyrenees than in most parts of France, since the expense and difficulty of making the great highways here has been such that it was not worth while building a carriage road on these hills unless the engineering was to be of the most perfect kind, and the surface of the best, and the gradients as easy as nature would allow. The consequence is that there are in the Pyrenees no roads (which he will find in the plains) where a man on a bicycle can go with difficulty, and a motor cannot go at all. Stretches of this kind, due to bad surface or to steepness, are familiar to every one, but I can remember none of the sort, not even of a few miles, between St. Jean Pied-de-Port and Puigcerdá, nor between the French plains and the Spanish.