The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

A companion and I had settled to force in 36 hours the passage from the Aston valley into Andorra. There is a path marked upon the map; the way is apparently quite clear and one might have made sure that with provision and calculation for one night, nothing could prevent one’s reaching the first houses of the Andorrans. On the contrary, this is what happened.

The first evening was mild and beautiful, the sky was clear, the path at first plain. It was so plain that we did not hesitate to continue it after dark. Here was a first mistake, and the breach of a rule I shall insist upon when we come to camping. Still, it was not this error which destroyed us.

We slept the few hours of darkness under a thorn bush before a most indifferent fire, and the next morning we began our way.

We came almost immediately after sunrise to a place where the valley bifurcated, and that in so confused a manner, with so many interlacing streams and so unpronounced a ridge between the main bodies of water, that we took the wrong ascent by the wrong stream, and only found, when we had ended in a precipitous cul-de-sac, that we had made an error. We went back to the bifurcation (which, remember, was of that confused sort where nothing but a very large scale map is of any use), and we made up the other stream. The hours which we had lost had brought us into the heat of the day, and the day was exceptionally hot. We climbed a shelving slope at the end of this further valley: a matter of 2000 feet, very steep and rough. When we were already near the summit there bowled over towards us from beyond it, without the least warning, a violent storm. We were so close to the top, and there was so little shelter on the open rocks we were ascending, that we thought it well to gain the summit before halting. On the whole the decision was wise. We found overhanging ledges upon the summit and took refuge there until the worst of the downpour had ceased. But the storm left behind it a mass of drifting cloud, now rising and now lifting, which made it quite impossible to determine what our true way should be. The summit of the slope was an open grass saddle with great boulders dotted about, and from this saddle a man might go down one of three declivities which branched southward from it. There was no seeing any complete view of the valleys below even in the intervals of the drooping clouds, for, as is so frequently the case in these steep hills, there was a great deal of “dead ground” just below us. We had to guess which of the undulations of the summit we should follow, we could not be certain until we had gone down some hundreds of feet that we had definitely entered an enclosed valley, but once on the floor of this we were fairly certain by our general direction that we had crossed the main watershed and were in Spain. The storm renewed itself; the late hour made us anxious, we pushed on through the driving mist and rain, necessarily losing a consistent view of the contours and the windings of the valley; when the sky cleared again we saw before us a great open gulf stretching down for miles and miles, and the very amplitude of the prospect further deceived us into believing that we were certainly descending into the first of the Spanish open places, but hour after hour went past and no sign of men appeared. There were not even any huts in the Jasses. To confuse us still further and to lead us on in our error, a definite path suddenly appeared; we naturally made certain that it was the head of the valley road upon the Spanish side. So confident were we that we must by the map and by all common sense be now close to habitations that, after consulting together a little, we thought it wiser to eat what little provisions remained so as to gather strength for a last effort, than to camp hungry and reserve our food for the morrow. When we had so eaten it grew dark; hour after hour of the night passed, and the path was still plain—but there was no sign of men. By midnight we were dangerously exhausted and incapable of pushing further: we lay down where we were by the side of a stream and slept. The morning of the third day we might well enough have failed to reach succour. We had come to the end of our powers, we had no more food and it was only the accidental encounter with a fisherman who happened to be thus far up in the hills that guided us to safety. He told us that by choosing that particular one of the three slopes we had come down, not upon the Spanish side, but into a long curving valley that had led us back again into French territory. We had made a circle in those forty-eight hours of strain and certainly had we not found him our getting home at all would have been doubtful.

Now these errors, for which there seems very little excuse when they are set down thus in print, were not only natural, but as it were, necessary. Anyone unacquainted with the district might have made them, and under our circumstances would inevitably have made them. Nothing but a large scale map—which does not exist—would have saved us the hours lost at the bifurcation of the streams, and not even a large scale map could have properly decided us at the confused summit of the pass where a full view, which the storm had prevented, was necessary to judging one’s direction. The true remedy lay not in maps, however perfect, but in allowing for the chances of error, in taking a full three days’ provision, and in avoiding that sort of forced marching which had exhausted us, and which we had only undertaken from fears about our remaining stock of food.

The other matter, that of the Canal Roya, is the more significant in that it was quite a little detail that might have betrayed us into a very nasty situation. I knew the Canal Roya, and acting on the strength of that knowledge, my companion and I decided late one summer evening not to camp in the valley but to push on over the pass at the head of it, for immediately beyond this pass we knew to lie the good new modern high road which leads down to Sallent. The pass was marked on the map in the clearest possible fashion, the valley was of a very particular and decisive shape, and the pass lay straight over the end of it. Now at that end was a sweep of high land, and rising up from it two rocky peaks. The map and the general trend of the land made it certain that the pass would go to the right or to the left of the lowest of these two rocky peaks. There was no difficulty of approach, and one unacquainted with the Pyrenees might have thought that it mattered little which side of the peak one took, but we both knew enough about the mountains to be sure that there was one way and only one way across; smooth and easy as the approach appeared from our side, all the chances were that somewhere upon the other side there would be precipices. The sun was getting low, and the path which we had been following was suddenly obliterated under a new-fallen mass of scree. Neither of us can to-day ascribe what we did to anything but luck. We looked at the peak carefully and determined that a certain little notch upon the right of it, was the port. We were fatigued after nearly 20 miles of walking (which had already included one Col) and we wearily began the last ascent. It so happened that as we painfully toiled up over and round the loose boulders, the surface to the left of the peak became more and more inviting. Our doubts as we surveyed it were like the conflict which goes on in daily life between instinct and reason. Every bit of thought out reasoning put the port at the little notch on the right, but every temptation which could assail two tired men, made us hope and wish against reason that it lay over the smooth grass to the left; at last in a cowardly and (as it turned out) salutary moment, we broke for the grass. We tried to persuade ourselves that if that smooth round sward was a cheat, and betrayed (as such enticements often betray in the Pyrenees) nasty limestone cliffs on the further side we still had daylight and strength enough to come down again and to go up to the rugged notch to which reason and duty pointed. We reached the grass and there found two things, first, the path which had been lost on the stones and the scree suddenly reappeared there, and secondly, the descent on the further side towards Sallent was as easy as walking down an English hill.

The reason of this apparent error in the map we soon discovered. Out of sight, beyond the Col, was yet another rocky mass, to the left. The scale of the map was not sufficient to indicate every mass of rock, upon this ridge, but the map, as a fact, did indicate this peak which had been hidden from the valley and was unable specially to indicate the other peak which had been more prominent to us as we walked up from below. The adventure ended well for we got on to the main road before dark and to Sallent before nine, having covered in that accidentally successful day close upon 30 miles. But it might have ended, and should in reason have ended, very differently. For when we looked at the Sallent side of the range the next morning we saw that this notch on which we had first directed ourselves would have led to a perfectly impossible fall of rocks upon the further side. It would have been equally impossible to have gone back in the dark. We should have spent the night on a high stony ledge, without a fire and without shelter and without food, and the next day we should have had no choice but to come down again into the Canal Roya, utterly exhausted, certainly without the strength to climb up again by way of experiment upon other issues, but bound to make our way, if we could, to Canfranc, miles away down the Aragon Valley. It is not certain that we should have had the strength to do this. These examples and many more that one might give, prove the inadvisability of any plan that does not allow for a wide margin of delay: and, as I have said, a margin of three days is not too ample.

Not only a misjudgment of topography, to which these hills particularly lend themselves, may put one into a hole of this sort, but mist may do it, or worse still, a sprained ankle. Or one may find oneself cut off by marshy ground, or 20 or 30 feet of sheer cliff, too small for the map to mark, may take one an hour out of one’s way. In general, allow three days’ provision for any task, and never plan single days in the Pyrenees unless you are following a high road.

A second rule is to take the first part of the day slowly and yet without halting. It is the morning usually that gives you your best chance upon the heights, and such examples of mist as have endangered any of my excursions have fallen usually from mid-day onwards. Apart from the danger of mist, if you break the back of the day by ten or eleven, before the first meal, you are safe for the end of it; and breaking the back of the day usually means getting over a port.