The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

The Biescas road leaves Jaca to the east and runs so for 10 miles, then it goes 8 miles northward to Biescas.

From Biescas it begins to rise, in the last part heavily; and Sallent, which is not 10 miles from Biescas as the crow flies, is nearly 1500 feet higher. The gorge of approach to Sallent is a plain embranchment from the Panticosa road at Sandinies about 8 miles from Biescas.

Sallent offers a problem to the bicyclist which it does not offer to the man with the motor, and that is the problem of lodging. It is a bad place to stop at, and yet the next place where one can sleep is over the pass, 17 miles on at Gabas. One will have gone nearly 40 miles from Jaca, and the last bit one will have been climbing all the way; for some miles up to Sallent quite steeply, and more or less uphill all the way from Biescas. To push the machine up another 8 miles to the summit (for it cannot be ridden) is a task, but it is a task worth accomplishing, especially if you have a long evening before you, for once on the summit you will have not only a run down of 8 or 9 miles to Gabas without putting your foot to the pedal, but also the prospect of the best inn in the Pyrenees, the delightful inn which the Bayous who own it call the Hotel des Pyrenees; or, if you like to take the whole pass at once, you have nearly 20 clear miles downhill without stopping, past Gabas to Laruns; but the inn at Laruns is not to be compared with the inn at Gabas.

If one takes on a bicycle the round which I have spoken of for a motor from Bayonne to Pamplona by the valley of the Baztan and back again by Roncesvalles, there is no difficulty about inns, but on the other hand there is a multitude of shorter hills, some of which cannot be ridden. You could make two short days of the journey out by sleeping at Elizondo, in which case on your first day you climb up a pass and down into a valley, and your second day is a repetition of the same process. The third day back from Pamplona to France has one hill at Erro, which you will hardly be able to climb, but from that valley through Burguete and right on to the top of the pass is rideable on any reasonable gear. From the summit down to Val Carlos all the way to the frontier is one long easy run down, and you may continue the valley road along the Nive as far as you like upon the same day. Even Bayonne is not too far at a stretch.

As for those who wish to know how to get a series of long coasts in these hills at the least pains, my advice to them is this: start from Perpignan, take the train from Perpignan to Mont Louis. From Mont Louis you have a run of 15 miles, falling 1000 feet all through the French Cerdagne to Bourg Madame, uninterrupted save for two or three short rises. At Bourg Madame next day an omnibus (with a very bad-tempered driver—at least he was so in my day) will take you up the Val Carol to the summit of the Puymorens; from there it is an uninterrupted coast all the way down the valley of the Ariège to Ax, and beyond as far as you like to go, 20 or 30 miles of downhill with scarcely an interruption.

The other way round is good coasting too. By the rail to Ax, up the Puymorens by coach, coast down Val Carol, ride up (through Llivia) to Mont Louis and coast down the gorges of the Tet. It is only in this eastern part of the range that you will get such long uninterrupted downhills: there is, in the central part, the run down from the Pourtalet (but no coach to take you up), and there is a coach up the Val d’Aran to Viella, with a run back of a few miles down the Garonne; but neither of these are like the Ariège valley or that of the Tet, and the roads up the enclosed western valleys to Luz, Bagnères, etc., have not sufficient fall for long coasting.

One ought not to leave the road system of the Pyrenees without saying something on driving. Your best town, I think, for beginning a drive is Oloron, and there is a job-master close to the station from whom you can get horses and carriages by the day, by the week, or by the month. I do not speak of this from my own experience but from what I have been told, and I know that there are relays of horses all up the pass; but whether the job-master has arrangements for relays I do not know. That sensible kind of travel has so generally died out that I should think it doubtful. It is better to depend upon the same horses for the whole journey, and whether upon the round by Navarre or that by Jaca the posthouses are frequent everywhere, your longest stretches without one being the bit of new road, 17 miles long, between Sallent and Gabas, and the similar 14 or 16 miles between Urdos and Canfranc.

On the other roads, should you determine to drive along them, there is one rather long piece without a relay up the Tourmalet, between the eastern foot of that pass and Barèges; but this road is continually traversed by carriages at all times, and there is sufficient provision for the distance. These three are the only long gaps without relays which you have to fear in driving through the Pyrenees. For the rest, except that your days’ journeys must be so much shorter, what I have said of the roads for motoring applies to driving also.