The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

It is best, however, when you have slept in Elizondo, which is a very pleasant little town, to take the motor-bus and get on to Pamplona; for the Basques, who detest as much as the Scotch to be behind the world, have a motor-bus along this mountain road. From Pamplona next day you can go by the new road to Burguete, passing through Larrasoaña and Erro. It is a long journey of nearly 30 miles; it can be broken, if you choose, at Erro, but the sleeping accommodation there is nothing very grand. If you push on beyond Burguete, over Roncesvalles, you can, in something under 40 miles, get to Val Carlos, the last town in Spain, and for those who can walk 40 miles this is the best thing to do. If not, break the journey in two at Erro, desolate as the little place is.

The object of course of this walk is the Pass of Roncesvalles, and the vast contrast between the slightly sloping Spanish plain of Burguete, running up to the summit of the Pyrenees, and the great chasm which opens beneath your feet when you have reached that summit, and which forms the entry into France.

You will not easily make a camp in any part of this round, and it is well to remember here, where first mention is made of crossing the Spanish frontier, that the Spaniards will not let a man leave their country unless he has due permission upon a paper form. Why this should be so I do not know, and I have very often gone in and out of Spain without telling the authorities, as I have for that matter gone in and out of Germany on foot, though the German officials are more stupid than the Spaniards, and therefore attach much more importance to such things. Still, it is safer to ask for your permit, and it will be given you by a functionary called a “Corregidor,” at Val Carlos. A few miles beyond, eight to be exact, you are in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, which is the head of the railway to-day, and which has been for nearly 1000 years the depot town at the foot of the pass for armies and for travellers. On this same flat where it stands, was the Roman fort and depot, but not quite on the same place; it stood on the spot now called St. Jean le Vieux, 2½ miles up the lateral valley. This last was the halting place of Charlemagne in the famous story, and St. Jean, as we see it, is a town not of the Dark but of the Middle Ages.

The next district to this of the Labourd, lying immediately to the east of it, we have seen to be called the Soule. It is also Basque, though it is Basque spoken with a different accent, and with certain verbal differences as well. The way from one to the other lies through wilder and more likely land for camping than is to be found in Baztan, Baigorry, or Roncesvalles. It is a good plan, if one has the leisure, to approach the Soule on foot by way of St. Jean, though the more ordinary way is to go round through the plains by train to Mauléon (which is the capital of the Soule).

If one goes on foot directly across from the Labourd into the Soule, he strikes that valley in its higher reaches, and well above Mauléon.

The shortest line, if one does not mind sleeping in a mountain village, is to take the high road from St. Jean Pied-de-Port to Lecumberry, and to follow that way up the valley of the Laurhibar until the high road comes to an end. It did so abruptly two miles or so beyond Laurhibar, some years ago, but as it is being continued, one may follow it every year further up the dale. The high road ends (or ended) about 10 miles from St. Jean; and Lecumberry is the last village still, however far the road may have progressed up the valley. When the road ceases one must continue up the valley by a path on the left bank of the stream. One soon finds on this left bank a series of precipitous cliffs; one must there cross over to the path upon the right bank. It is also possible to keep to the right bank all the way—there is a track on either side—but I speak of the usual way. Henceforward the path remains quite clear and runs close alongside the stream, with steep cliffs upon the further shore, until, in the last mile or two, before the head of the valley, one enters a wood, and it is here that, if you are not very careful, you will lose your way. The contours are complicated, the valleys numerous, and the alternation of wood and open land most confusing. But if you will go due east by your compass from the point where you entered the wood (abandoning the path where it crosses the stream and goes over to the south), and if you will remember always to turn any precipice or ledge of rock by descending to the left of it, and always to descend after you have made the first high open space, you will come upon a clear track not quite three miles from the point where the path enters the wood.

It sounds but a vague indication, but it is a sufficient one, because bad precipices prevent you from going too much to the right, and the natural tendency of man to go downhill when he can will prevent you from going up on to the ledge upon your left. You will find yourself shepherded—if you always go as due east as is possible, and always turn a ledge of rock to the left—into a track which runs all along the high lands above the slopes that dominate the Brook Aphours; a little way down, that track falls into a high road, and a few miles further the road reaches Tardets, the central town in the valley of the Soule, half-way between Mauléon and the highest summits. The whole journey from St. Jean thus described is a big distance, nearer 40 miles than 30, with windings all the way, and you must be prepared if you become fatigued or have bad luck with your weather, either to camp out in the woods at the summit of the pass, or to sleep in the first hamlet upon the eastern side.

There is, indeed, a short cut which strikes the valley much higher, but it is difficult to make and involves the climbing of two cols. For this short cut the directions are as for the last, until your path along the Laurhibar has struck the wood; there, instead of leaving it when it turns south, and instead of going east (as above), you must keep to the track. It will cross the stream, still going due south, wind up between an open space through the woods, and will point before you lose it to the climb over the shoulder of the Pic d’Escoliers; it is a stiff climb of nearly 2000 feet from the point where you crossed the stream and very steep. The 2000 feet or so are climbed in under two miles. When you get to the shoulder of the peak a steep southern slope lies before you, diversified and made perilous by rocks, and separating plainly into an eastern and a western valley. Between you and the eastern valley (which is that you must descend) are steep rocks; they can be turned, however, by going to the right of them, but the whole place is precipitous and difficult. The advantage appears when once you are down on the floor of the valley (which is but 1000 feet from the peak), for you come within a mile to a clear path, and once you have come to this, you are in another two miles, at the village of Larrau, which is the terminus of the great national road, and stands in the last upper waters of the valley.

If you approach the Soule by the more ordinary way you will come by train through Puyoo, change there, and take the train for Mauléon; and Mauléon, as I have said, is the capital of the Soule. But the true mountain town is Tardets, half-way up the valley. Tardets is the market town for all the Basques of the hills, and you can never have enough of it, both of its heavenly hotel, of which I shall speak when I come to speak of hotels, and for its universal shops, and for its kindly people. It stands in an opening of the lower hills, just before the valley narrows and enters the high mountains, and you may reach it from Mauléon by a tramway which runs up the river as far as Tardets and then turns off to the left and goes round to Oloron.