The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

If you approach the Soule in this manner, making Tardets your starting-point, you will do well to equip yourself in that town and then to continue up the valley some five miles past Licq, until you come to the fork of the river. It is an unmistakable point, because a very definite rocky ridge comes down and separates the two sources of the river Saison, which is the river of the Soule. The branch to the right (as you go southward) leads up the valley to Larrau, of which I have just spoken, and the high road follows it; the one to the left (which is the main stream and is called the Chaitza) has no main road along it, but a good mule track, very clear and plain, and leading at last to the village of Ste Engrace, which lies at the extreme end of the valley and gives the whole district its name.

Ste Engrace was a saint of the persecution of Diocletian. She was martyred in Saragossa, and the name of the village is one of the many examples of the way in which the southern influence overlaps these hills. I have said that the Spanish sandal is used to the very foot of the French Pyrenees, and so is the wine-skin which is common to all Spain, and so is the Spanish mule. Here you may see the Spanish saints as well reaching beyond the summits.

From where you leave the main road and go up the Chaitza valley to Ste Engrace is a distance of 8 or 9 miles, and in this valley, in its upper waters, is to be found one of the wonders of the Pyrenees, and also one of the main passages into Spain.

The wonder is the gorge of the Cacouette; the passage is the twin passage of the Port d’Ourdayte and the Port Ste Engrace, and near them to the west are two easier ports.

The Cacouette is a cut through the limestone such as you might make with a knife into clay or cheese, with immense steep precipices on either side, and apart from the track above the cliffs there is some sort of tourist’s way along the cavernous ravine for those who admire such things. Of the two ports, the one path goes up the western side of that cleft in the limestone (which drops 1500 feet into the earth), and the other goes up the eastern side. To take the road up the western side, you leave the Ste Engrace road 3 miles after leaving the great highway, by a lane which goes off to the right and drops down into the valley; it is quite plain, and is the only road so leaving the main track, so that it cannot be mistaken. It climbs the opposing hill, and if you follow it through all its windings it will take you to the Port Belhay, or to the Port Bambilette, both under a mountain called Otxogorrigagne, and both easy. But if you continue just above the limestone precipice, you will come into a very striking circus of rock just under the watershed, up which your path perilously climbs to the summit and the frontier; this is the Port d’Ourdayte.

The Port Ste Engrace, though not half a mile distant from it, is reached in quite a different manner, and the separation between the two is due to this limestone gorge, which cuts off one path from the other.

If you are going to try to cross by Ste Engrace, sleep at the village before starting. There is a good comfortable inn kept by people of the same name as those who keep the inn at Elizondo, Jarégui. It is so steep and difficult a bit that if you were to attempt to do it in one day, without sleeping at Ste Engrace, you would hardly succeed unless you already knew the mountain well, and mist, which is the fatal difficulty of these western Pyrenees, will more commonly catch you in the early afternoon than at any other time in the day, so that you had better make your ascent before noon. When you have slept at Ste Engrace you will find the path the next morning winding round through the woods, at the base of the hill opposite the village. One must ask the way to the start of this path, and it is not always clear after the first two miles; one has now and then to cast about for it a little, but at last it emerges upon a high grassy slope, which runs all the way to the crest of the hill and the frontier. The path does not follow the straight ascent of the hill, it curves nearer and nearer to a precipice which is the same as that climbed by the neighbouring paths of the Port d’Ourdayte; for ten dangerous yards it runs on a tiny platform right along the gulf and makes over the crest into the further Spanish Basque valley, whose capital is Isaba.

Of this valley I can say nothing, for I have not succeeded in crossing the Ste Engrace, though I have twice tried, but I am told that Isaba is among the best of these little mountain Basque villages or towns for entertainment and for cleanliness, and all Basque villages and towns are cleanly. There is a good posada. From Isaba also a high road runs into the higher valleys of Navarre and to Pamplona.

Near this territory of the Soule, and partly included in it, are two great districts where a man may spend many days at his ease in camp there. The first is the great forest of the Tigra, which stretches to the west of Tardets and is full of rocks, rivers, and adventure. You may take it at its greatest width, counting one or two open spaces, to be 8 or 9 miles, and at its greatest length, from the Peak of the Vultures to St. Just, to be much the same. Its high places, some of which are bare peaks, some clothed with woods, range for the most part round about 3000 feet, but the highest point—of which I have never heard the name, and which is on the very south of the forest, just passes 4000 feet. Tardets is always at hand on the one hand, St. Jean Pied-de-Port rather further on the other; from both one may re-provision oneself.