The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

Of the small towns or large villages which this little secluded corner of the world contains, Bédous is that which will seem the capital to the wayfarer, for it is the only one which stands upon the main road; it is the terminus of a railway which will soon be finished, and of which nearly all the track is already made. Bédous, by this time, must also have more population, as it certainly has more wealth than any of the surrounding places. But Accous is the true capital of the five, and it is pleasurable to hear with what reverence the villagers of the farms around speak of Accous as though it were an Andorra-viella or a Toulouse. All this wonderful and silent plain is marked with long lines of poplars which enhance by their straight lines the immensity of the heights around them.

If one will pass some days in this singular valley it forms an excellent place from which to explore the high passes into the Val d’Ossau, and the bases of the two great mountains which, to the east and to the west, neither visible from the floor of the valley, are, as it were, its guardians: the Pic d’Anie and the Pic du Midi d’Ossau. The man who does not desire to cover much ground but who wants thoroughly to know some very Pyrenean part of the Pyrenees will do well to stop at the Hotel de la Poste at Bédous, and thence climb at his leisure up on to the platforms from which spring these isolated and dominant masses of rock.

The Pic du Midi remains in one’s mind more perhaps than any of the isolated mountains of Europe. It is quite savage and alone, and you must fatigue yourself to reach it. There is no common knowledge of it and yet it is as much itself as is the Matterhorn. The Pic d’Anie, though it is less isolated, stands even more alone and has this quality that it dominates the whole of the seaward side of the Pyrenees for it is much higher than anything westward of it. Also it is the boundary beyond which the Basques and their language have not gone.

Beyond this plain of Bédous, when you have passed the southern “gate” of it, you come into a long, deep and winding gorge which leads you at last to Urdos, and Urdos is and has been since history began the outpost of the French in these hills. It was the Roman outpost and the mediæval one, and it was the outpost through the Revolutionary wars.

Napoleon, who in everything recognized and imitated the example of Rome, and who, for that matter, caused the Empire to rise again from the dead, determined that a modern road should go again where the old Roman road had gone. He determined this in connexion with his Spanish wars, and decreed in 1808 that a way for artillery should cross where the legions had gone. But Europe, as we all know, would not upon any matter accept in the rush of a few years the constructive desire of Napoleon and of the Revolution. It has taken more than three generations to do not half the vast work they planned, and this road, which like almost every good road over the Alps and the Pyrenees has Napoleon and the Revolution for its origin, waited till past the middle of the nineteenth century before it reached so much as the summit of the port.

Under Napoleon III, in the sixties if I remember right, the thing was done and the road reached the summit of the Somport, the lowest and the most practicable of the high passes of the central mountains. But the Spaniards still hung back, and it was not till the other year that the road upon the Spanish side was completed. Now, however, one may not only go all the way upon a high carriage road from Oloron to Saragossa straight south across the hills, but one may find the whole way marked with mile-stones as the Romans would have marked it, and saved at every difficulty by engineering of which the Romans themselves would have been proud. Once over the summit there is no resting place till one reaches Canfranc, 6 or 7 miles by the windings of the road below one. After Canfranc the valley of the Aragon, which one has been following, opens, and the plain of Jaca lies before one bounded by its great ridge to the southward, the Peña de Oroel.

If one would not go all that length of high-road (from Oloron to Jaca is over 50 miles) there are upon the Spanish side two lateral diversions which a man may take. The first is over the Col des Moines, the other into and over the Canal Roya.

The first can be seen right before one at the summit of the pass; for when one stands upon that summit one has, running eastward from the road, a great open valley at the head of which is clearly distinguishable a bare rocky ridge with a low saddle which is the Col des Moines. It is perfectly easy upon either side, and upon the further side it shows one the splendid and unexpected vision of the Pic du Midi standing up alone beyond the little tarns at its feet: a double pyramid of steep rock upon which the snow can hardly lie in tiny patches and whose main precipices are dark, to the north, away from the sun.

The next lateral valley southward of the Col des Moines is that of the Canal Roya, but one can only enter it after going down the main road for quite a thousand feet. There a bridge will be seen spanning the Aragon and a little doubtful path leading beyond eastward up the lateral valley. It is two hours up that valley to its head by a path going first on the right bank of the stream then crossing over to the left one. One thus reaches by a continuous ascent the cirque or amphitheatre which bounds it at the eastern extremity of the valley. Here there is a difficulty in finding the easiest and lowest col. The map is doubtful and the details upon the map are not sufficiently numerous. The Canal Roya is well worth camping in and returning by to the main Spanish road if one is inclined (and if one is, one would do well to camp near the wood upon the left bank of the stream not quite half-way up the vale for there is no timber further on). But if one does not camp and prefers to get over the col into the valley of the Gallego the rule is to note a sharp peak which stands exactly at the apex of the valley—it is the lowest of the peaks around but very distinct, forming an isolated steeple due east of the last springs of the stream. The way lies to the left or north of this peak and just under its shoulder up a loose mass of fallen rocks on which an eye practised in these things can discover from time to time a trace not of a true path but at least of infrequent travel. Upon the far side easy slopes of grass take one down in about an hour to the Sallent road.