The Pyrenees

by Hilaire Belloc

Even if Luchon were as detestable as the Riviera, one would have to come to it because it is the knot and reservoir of all mountain travel. The valley strikes so deep into the hills, brings the railway so near their summits, and is so exactly situated at the “fault” spoken of so frequently in this book (the break in the Pyrenean line where the landscapes and peoples of the chain meet) that it is difficult not to pass through Luchon at one time or another during any length of days passed in these hills. Even if you make a vow to clear Luchon, you may find yourself caught in any one of twenty surrounding barbarisms with a bad foot or no money, and compelled to set a course for this harbour. Moreover Luchon is by no means the vulgar place its riches ought to make it. The fashion for it was first made by reasonable people, many Spaniards come and help to give the place its tone, and perhaps the very extremity of evil corrects itself, and Luchon, being so crammed with wealthy people, knows its own vices better than places just a little less rich, and it is therefore more tolerable. At any rate the problem of sleeping at Luchon is easily solved in July and August because all prices are pretty much the same, and you cannot depend upon the printed prices at all. For pension it is otherwise. There are fixed prices and they are not exorbitant for such a place. A very clean, decent, rich hotel is the Hotel d’Angleterre, where, if you stop some days, they will charge you, I believe, about 40 francs a day. There is a place for poorer people called the Hotel de l’Europe; all its prices are cheaper, but it has this drawback that you get nothing national. It is clean and there is a roof over your head, but you get neither French comfort nor French discomfort, and you are paying a little less for things a great deal worse, notably in the matter of food. The bold who fear nothing will go and stop at the village little inn called the Golden Lion, which is near the old church and existed before wealthy Luchon was born or thought of. Here the bold will consort with Muleteers and the populace in some discomfort. One of the best uses to which one can put Luchon is to eat in it, and for sleeping to go outside and camp in the woods: and the best place for the passer-by to eat is the Café Arnative on the main street; its cooking is very good indeed, and the wine really remarkable; it is such good wine that one wonders why they give it away, and every year as one returns to the place one fears it may have ceased, but it continues. Speak to the manager in English for he knows and loves that tongue, or in Spanish or in French. In the use of the hotels and restaurants of Luchon, however—always excepting the Golden Lion—remember that they are snobbish about clothes, and that even two days in the hills puts you well below the standard which they can tolerate. I confess that when I have had to use Luchon, I have depended upon clothes which were waiting for me at the station; and it is not difficult to use Luchon as a sort of half-way house in this matter, leading the right life in the western mountains, coming down to Luchon to find one’s luggage, dressing up, plunging into worldly pleasure at Luchon, sending one’s luggage off again to Ax or Perpignan, and then taking to the eastern hills for another bout of poverty.

In the Val d’Aran, next to the valley of Luchon, there is but one place where one is likely to stay, and that is in the town of Viella, which is the capital; for the Val d’Aran is a small place, and there is no advantage in stopping anywhere else. The Posada Deo is that which I know best and is good but of course Spanish; the cooking is a sort of mixture of Spanish and French, but the time you have to wait for it and in the manner in which it is given you is wholly Spanish. The wine also (oddly enough!) is Spanish. It ought, on the Garonne, to be of the Garonne, but the customs interfere.

The Catalan valley, south and east of the Val d’Aran, the valley of Esterri, has, in that town, a good little hotel, the Hotel Pepe. The people are thoroughly Catalan in their love of money and therefore you must bargain. Whatever you do, do not stop at any of the other places in the valley, it is even better to go through a storm than to risk Llavorsi, or worse still Escaló, but on the far side of the hill and of the port called St. John of the Elms there is a most delicious inn, with an old innkeeper of the very best, at Castellbo.

To return to the French side; if you go by train to St. Girons you may likely enough change at Boussens, the station has not (or had not) any buffet, but there was (and I hope is) an hotel opposite it where people travelling by train ate; the cooking here is the best in the whole of the Pyrenees, which is saying a good deal. At St. Girons itself there is not only good cooking, but the wine which Arthur Young admired, and which was well worthy of his admiration. Do not go to the best hotel (which is the hotel of the Princes and of the Alpine Club), but to the next cheapest which is called the Hotel de France; at least I have found this last to be excellent and cheaper for its quality of food and drink and repose than any other in all this chain. These things change quickly, what was true so short a time ago may not be true now; but so, at least, I found it.

In the valley of the Ariège it is always well to make Ax your sleeping-place, for Ax, though there are waters and though the baths make the prosperity of the place, is a very pleasant little town and the right beginning for the mountains, whether you are going by the main road into the Roussillon, or up the Ariège in the Carlitte group, or again over the main range into Andorra. At Ax there are two rival hotels, the Hotel de France, and the Hotel Sicre. The latter is a little cheaper though both are cheap, and while I know the second one best I should recommend the first; it will take you in as cheaply as any, and seems the more carefully kept; both have garages. The Hotel Sicre suffers somewhat from being directly attached to its Thermal Baths. If you are going to explore the wild country of the Upper Aston, you must start from Cabanes lower down on the railway. There is no need to sleep there. The valley above it has some of the best camping places in the Pyrenees. But it is worth knowing the name of the hotel, which is “Du Midi.” The whole place is, of course, quite small and cheap.

On the high road into Roussillon choose Porté, primitive as it is, and avoid Hospitalet (on the hither side of the pass of Puymorens) like the plague. Hospitalet and the village just before it, Merens, are for some reason or other quite spoilt; I fancy tourists come up so far as these two without going over the pass which they find too much trouble, and that their coming and going has spoilt the two places: at any rate they are detestable. They overcharge you and treat you with contempt at the same time.

Porté, though it is but a few miles further on, is quite different. Here is one rude inn, as cheap as the grace of God, and kept by the most honest people in the world; Michet by name. It is thoroughly Spanish in character (for remember that Porté, though politically in France, is on the Spanish side of the main range, and that the pass just above is on the watershed); the animals live on the ground floor, the human beings just above them. You will never regret to have slept at Porté.

As you go on into the plain of the Cerdagne you will find a good inn at La Tour Carol: not exactly enthusiastic in their greeting of the traveller, but polite. It is quite a little place of only half a thousand inhabitants, and you cannot expect much from it, but it is better than Saillagousse where they are most unwilling.

Up the road to France from Saillagousse, at Mont Louis, is a hotel of which I can speak but little because my own experience of it was late on a holiday night when everything was very full, but it is substantial, it is cheap and I have heard it praised. It is called the Hotel de France, and it is a starting-point for the omnibus down to the rail-head at Villefranche in the valley above which rise the flanks of the Canigou.