The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

The question will, however, be asked by anyone who proposes to bicycle in this district for the first time, whether the long gradients are not such as to destroy the advantage of using the greater part of the roads. To this objection a general rule applies, one which will seem a little unusual when it is first read, but which I have found from experience to be true. It is this, that the few crossings of the hills from north to south make easier journeys for the bicyclist than do the lateral roads across the ribs or buttresses of the main chain. Anyone going for instance on a bicycle from Laruns to Lourdes, will have some very fine scenery for his pains, and, if the day is fine, he will not regret his experience, but he should be warned that on this lateral road most of his energy will be taken up in slowly climbing the great pass over the Mont Laid; for though it is but a few miles as the crow flies, it is a big and toilsome business along the highway. Nor would that be the only pass. It is characteristic of these lateral roads that they usually contain more than one big ascent. He will be troubled again at the Col-de-Soulor and to get from Laruns to Lourdes, though the two towns are in contiguous valleys and no further apart than London and Windsor, would be a day’s work for most men.

Another example of the same sort could be given from the other lateral roads of the Pyrenees, as, for instance, the low cross road between St. Jean Pied-de-Port and the valley of Mauléon. Here the pass is much less high, but a mile or two from St. Jean, when you have gone through St. Jean-le-Vieux, you begin to climb, and all the long way of the valley of the Bidouze, and out again, over the next range, that overlooks the Saison, is a succession of long wheelings uphill.

For the purpose of seeing some particular place in the next valley, it may be worth while to follow one of these lateral roads, but a general tour of that sort is not worth while. If, on the contrary, a bicyclist chooses the main north and south roads, he will find many advantages in the choice, and I would recommend in particular, as the best that he can undertake in these mountains, the round from Oloron to Jaca and back, which I have already described. Such a journey is a task taking three full days, four or five easy days, and it gives such an opportunity of contrasting two civilizations, and of learning the barrier which separates them, as does not offer itself in so short a space anywhere else, I think, in western Europe. I will not detain the reader in this particular with what I have to say upon this road in general, for that will rather concern the description I will make of it when I speak of travel on foot, but I will point out in what way it can be dealt with by the bicyclist.

All the long road from Oloron to Bédous, though it leads to the very heart of the mountains, needs no more energy upon a bicycle than does a two-hours’ ride (and it ought not to take two hours) in any part of the plains. There are one or two half-miles of hill, all of them rideable, but the general run of the way is flat, or burdened with a slight rise which is hardly perceived, and the approach to Bédous, in its magic circle of hills, is actually down along a fine slope, which faces the last ridge and the frontier watershed. So far, it is a ride which one may take even upon a high gear, and have for his pains as fine a survey of great mountains as he will find in Europe. From Bédous the road cuts straight across the dead level of the valley floor for 2½ miles, passes a “gate” of rock, and thence continually runs through gorges up the 7 miles to Urdos. It rises considerably in this last bit—nearly 1 in 20—and though the distance from Oloron to Urdos may not take one more than one afternoon, anyone bicycling into Spain will do well to pass the night at Urdos, for the big climb begins just after that place. In this hamlet, of no pretensions, you may choose with advantage the little inn called the “Hotel of the Travellers,” of which, and whose charming terrace, I speak in another place.

Next day, unless you wish to accomplish a feat, you will begin to walk up to the summit of the road. There are parts that can be ridden—the last quarter is almost flat—but the earlier part and the larger is too steep for comfort. The continental road-book makes the whole distance 12 miles, the kilometres by the roadside, which are somewhat more reliable, make it 8, and so does the map; anyhow it is a continuous uphill which should be taken leisurely, pushing one’s machine until one gets to the flat bit at the top. The short cuts are here, unlike those of some other cols, quite impossible to a bicycle, even when one is pushing it, and the whole way must be taken upon the high road; if one can afford it, it is wise to have the machine carried on a cart as far as the hospital, 2 miles from the obelisk which marks the frontier and the summit of the pass; but whether one pushes it, or whether one has it carried, it is a three-hours’ climb. It is wisest to take these three hours in the early morning.

From the summit at the entry into Spain there is 2 miles of steep new zigzag, falling a little too sharply, and all around is the very novel aspect of the southern side of the range, where the dryness and the sun have eaten up the forest; at the foot of this zigzag begins an easy and continual run down of 7 or 8 miles into Canfranc; your bicycle takes its own way; there is no place so steep as to fatigue one with the break, still less to be of any danger. The 17 miles from Canfranc onwards towards Jaca is a road upon the whole descending, but by that time one has entered the foot hills, which are flat and undulating rather than mountainous, and at Jaca you will find the Hotel Mur, which I have called the kindest little hotel in Europe, and certainly one of the cleanest in Spain.

You will leave Jaca early after spending there your second night. I am not saying that the whole distance from Oloron could not be done in a day, on the contrary, it could be done quite easily. A man could pass the night at Oloron, starting in the early morning from that town, be at Urdos easily by ten, lunch there at leisure, get to the summit by four, and be down at Jaca before dark on a July day, and before the hour of the late Spanish meal. But the climbing of the pass would fatigue him, it would come at an awkward time of the day, and he would have to count upon what is not so certain in the Pyrenees, fine weather. It is best to break the journey at Urdos as I have advised.

From Jaca, a great road leads all the way down to Saragossa, throughout scenery where you are at first amazed by the contours of the isolated cliffs above the gorges of the Gallego, and afterwards almost equally amazed by the aridity of the great plain that slopes down to the Ebro. The run from Jaca to Saragossa is too much for one day in the hot season. It had best be broken at Huesca. If he choose to make this excursion, the traveller will have to return by the same road, and he would perhaps be wise to save himself the tedium of it and to put his machine upon the train, for a railway goes back, much as the road does, to Jaca.

If one does not take the excursion to Saragossa but returns to France, the way is by Biescas, Sallent, and the Val d’Ossau.