The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

Note that these two cols and the stretch from road to road and from inn to inn can only with some peril be undertaken in one day from Urdos. In fine weather and without accident the thing is simple enough, but when you are baulked for an hour or two by the trail, or if you start a little late, or if you are detained by mist you may very easily not manage the passage from one of the great roads to the other, near as they look upon the map.

With everything going well, carrying little weight and fresh, it is quite three hours (and more like three and a half) from Urdos to the bridge over the Aragon. It will be another two up the Canal Roya and two more over its col and down the other side to the high road, and even from that point on the high road, if you follow the road only, there are two more hours before you reach Sallent. It is a very heavy day of quite 30 miles with two cols, one of 5000 feet, the other of 6500 feet, to be taken on the way, and it is foolish to undertake either the Col des Moines or the Canal Roya from Urdos without allowing for the chance of one night at least upon the mountain.

The second pair of valleys, that of the Gallego on the Spanish side, and the Gave d’Ossau on the French side, are linked together by two very easy passes, and one difficult one of which I shall speak in a moment.

The old port, now called “Port Vieux de Sallent,” or the “Puerta Vieja,” is easy enough, though it went over a higher part of the mountain than the new pass just next door to it. I say it is higher than the pass now used, and this contrast is not infrequently found in the Pyrenees, some feature or other in the topography of the ridge making it more convenient for a native to cross by a slightly higher saddle than by some lower one close by. For instance, the Somport itself is somewhat higher than a quite unknown gap four miles to the west of it, but this lower gap was never used because it led into a Spanish valley of a difficult and most isolated kind.

In the case of the two passes from the Val d’Ossau into Spain, the obstacle which prevented the lower pass being used until quite lately, was a great mass of rock overhanging the sources of the Gave d’Ossau, in the highest part of the valley. When the new highway was made, this rock was blasted and cut so as to take the road round it, and thus the low pass beyond, called Pourtalet, was utilized. It is below 6000 feet and exactly 1000 feet lower than the old Port de Sallent. But even nowadays, if you are on foot you will do well to cross by the old port, high as it is, for it saves time.

While I am on the subject I must warn the reader that the 1/100,000 map does not accurately convey the shape of the last two miles of the road upon the French side, and the line of road mere guesswork upon the Spanish, though the shape of the mountains is accurately given.

This pair of valleys is remarkable for another feature upon the French and upon the Spanish slopes: their wildness. Let me speak first of the French. The French valley, the Val d’Ossau, is one of the wildest and most deserted in the Pyrenees, and also it is the one most densely clothed with forests. The reason of this is that there is less flat ground at the foot of it than in any other. Nowhere does it expand into even a narrow circus, and about Laruns, where it debouches upon the lowlands, and the summit of the pass into Spain, a distance of perhaps 17 miles, there is but one large village, close to the bottom of the valley, and that owes its existence to Thermal Springs; it is called Eaux Chaudes—a dismal place, squeezed in between the torrent and the cliff, dirty, uncomfortable, and sad. Higher up, however, a tiny hamlet, the humblest and most remote in the world, one would think, has of recent years taken on some little importance through travel; this is the hamlet of Gabas, which may be said to consist in three inns, a ruinous chapel, most pathetic, and a customs station. Of the excellent inn at Gabas, I will speak elsewhere.

This valley of the Ossau is the base for two districts, both of which are very Pyrenean, and on either of which a man may spend a day or a month of lonely pleasure. One is the steep and very fine valley of the Sousquéou, the other is the short and extremely steep torrent bed which leads up to the foot of the Pic du Midi.

This mountain dominates all this section of the Pyrenees. The approach to it by the Col des Moines I have already mentioned; this ascent by the short valley from Gabas, through the woods, is better, because you come right up on to the mountain suddenly from the depth of a vast forest, and you feel its isolation.

I know of no hill which seems more to deserve a name or to possess a personality. Round its base there is matter for camping for days or for weeks, good water, lakes to fish in, shelter, both of rocks and of trees, human succour not too far off (Gabas is not three miles as the crow flies from the summit of the mountain), and a complete independence.