VIII The Canigou
The Canigou, whichever way one looks at it, is a separate district and must be separately approached and separately travelled in. It stands apart from the rest of the range, it has a different character, and travel in it is of a different sort from other Pyrenean travel. It is not only physically cut off from the rest of the Pyrenees, indeed, its physical isolation has been a good deal exaggerated by people who have looked up to it from the plain and have not carefully noted its plan; it is rather morally cut off by the way in which it dominates one particular province and one famous plain to the exclusion of every other peak; so that when you are going through the Roussillon, especially along the sea coast, the only thing you can think of is the Canigou, which seems to be as much the lonely spirit of the district, as Etna does of the sea east of Sicily, or as Vesuvius does of the Bay of Naples. It will perhaps sound surprising or unlikely to those of my readers who know the Pyrenees, when I say that the Canigou is not physically isolated from the chain, it is indeed less isolated in its way than is the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, or even the Pic du Midi d’Ossau, for it is connected with the south by a high ridge which one can hardly ever see at full length from the plain, and which is, I think, only clearly observable from the frontier heights south of Arles upon the Tech. How thorough is the connexion, however, what follows will show.
The Canigou is somewhat over 9000 feet in height, to be accurate 9135, yet it is but the terminal point and not the highest point in a long ridge which runs south-westward to the frontier at the Roque Couloum. It next forms that frontier for 15 or 20 miles, and is then continued past the Port de Col Toses into Spain, where it forms the magnificent wall of the Sierra del Cadi.
A man without heart or vision would see in the Canigou nothing but the last northern point of that long range, but the political accident which makes the Roussillon French, the cross chain which springs from the Pic de Couloun and runs to the Mediterranean, and above all the aspect of the mountains from the civilized wealthy plain to the north and east (where the connecting ridge cannot be seen), and its false appearance of isolation when one observes it from the sea, all make of the Canigou one of the most individual mountains in Europe.
There are, as I have said, many heights in its own ridge, further to the south and west, which surpass it. The Donyais is within a few feet of it, the Enfer or Gous and the Pic du Géant next door, above the valley of the Tet, are higher; the Puigmal just on the watershed is much higher. The summit of the Canigou is but 1500 or 1600 feet above the crest of the ridge in its own immediate neighbourhood, and even the lowest point in that ridge (the Col de Boucacers) is not 2000 feet below it. Nevertheless, it produces, as I have said, an effect of unity and of isolation, and there is not only the illusion of its outline as seen from the north and east, but also the fact that the mountain spreads out in a fan of ridges from its summit to the lowlands all around, and stands upon a broad expanded base, more or less circular in shape, spreading from the Tech upon the south to the Tet upon the east, north, and west.
The Canigou is not a mountain that gives one any climbing to speak of, or that affords any problems or difficulties. There is even, nowadays, a carriage road most of the way up on the northern side, but it is the best place for camping and changing camp that you can find anywhere. All the flanks of it are covered with a series of dense woods; they form a belt 2 or 3 miles deep (in places nearly 5) and running almost continuously round the whole mountain, a circuit of at least 30 miles. Your choice for halting and camping places in these woods is infinite, there is water everywhere and you are nowhere too far from provisions. If you will take the road from Villefranche up to Vernet you will, at that village, be near the steepest side of the mountain and a wood which everywhere affords excellent camping ground. By following up the path to Casteil and taking the track which leads south and east from that hamlet, you are at the inhabited point nearest to its summit, and you have wood and water up to the last mile in distance, or the last 2000 feet in height; but remember, if you wish to make for the summit by this trail, that you must always bear to the right as you walk, choosing always the right-hand trail when there is a diversion, and coming out on the south side of that ridge which has the summit at one end and the Peak de Quazémi at the other. On the open part of this steep bit there is a definitely marked path which follows the left bank of the stream until it is right under the last rocks of the Canigou and then makes straight up by zigzags. If you would go the easier way which everybody takes, you must start from Prades, which is the town of the mountain, and in which anyone will show you the house where the local agent of the French Alpine Club is ready with information.
Your road goes through Taurinya (or if you start from Villefranche, through Fillols), and the new carriage road runs up the ridge between the two valleys—the valley of the Fillols and the valley of Taurinya—first over open country, then through wood until you come to quite the upper part of the Taurinya, where the road turns round the steep corner overhanging the sources of the torrent. This particular wood is called the wood of Balatag, a word that is not so hard to pronounce in Catalan as in French, for the Catalans add an “e” at the end of it.
The road does not go to the actual summit, but comes out on to the shoulder of the mountains, an open space looking to the north, north-west and east, where stands the hotel which has been put up by the French Alpine Club. This hotel is not quite 2000 feet below the highest summit which lies exactly to the south of it. The other summit to the north-east, the ridge of which comes round behind the hotel, is the Pic Puigdarbet. You must allow five or six hours to get to the hotel without haste from the valley of the Tet, and the road is somewhat shorter if you start from Villefranche, than if you start from Prades, but of the two ways, much the more interesting for a man on foot is the old way by Casteil and the Brook Cady which I first described. Here you can camp half-way up the mountain without fear of disturbance from travellers, choosing, for preference, the end of the wood just under the summit, and so make that summit at dawn.
Unless you are in a hurry to get on to Perpignan, one of the best ways of treating the Canigou is to go across it from the valley of the Tet into the valley of the Tech, and from Arles on the Tech to take the railway through Ceret and Elne to Perpignan.
It is of course a long way round, but it shows you both sides of the mountain.
You could hardly get right across the main ridge from the hotel; but you can take the path that goes round the northern flank of the mountain, that is, through the wood that clothes the buttresses of the Pic Bargebit, and that comes out in the valley of the Dalmanya, a torrent running down north-eastwards from the summit. If you are afraid of losing your way you can go down into the village of Dalmanya and up thence by a clear path from the church of the village to the iron mines under the Col de Cirere; from that col there is a very winding high road (of which of course you can cut off most of the turnings) which gets you down to Corsady and so to Arles. On the southern side of the mountain you can go down the path which follows the Brook of Cady, and do your best to note the Peak of the Thirteen Winds which is the peak precisely due south of the main summit and 3000 feet from it at the end of the long ridge. When you have made quite certain which is the Peak of the Thirteen Winds, cross the brook, and work up if you can to the saddle immediately south-west of it, and between it and the Pic de Routat, which is a trifle lower and rises a thousand yards to the south-west of the Peak of the Thirteen Winds.
This col is called the Portaillet, and the valley on the further side is called “The Old or Abandoned Pass.” When you have got across you will know why. A wood covers its lower part, and a little brook called the Cambret runs through it, but there is no regular path, and it is a business to find the first huts, which are at an open space upon the stream between it and the wood, and quite 4000 feet below the col.
The descent is exceedingly steep, and there I leave it.
From these huts (which are called St. Duillem) is a good plain path down to the Tech, and to the little hamlet which has the same name as the river (Le Tech) whence the national high road takes one in 6 miles to Arles, the more usual crossing (which is not really a crossing of the mountains at all, but a crossing of the ridge to the south of it) is by the Pla de Guillem, so called because it does not go near Guillem, and this way is as plain as a pike-staff. You take the road from Villefranche to Fuilla, which is not quite 3 miles off, first up the Tet, then to the left southwards up a lateral valley, you follow that lateral valley and the high road up it from Fuilla to Py, rather more than 5 miles on, and southward all the way from Py a path goes south-west up the right bank of a torrent which comes in there. The track is quite clear and carries you up to the sources of the stream, and to the saddle in the final ridge which is called the Pla de Guillem. It is a steep climb of nearly 4000 in rather more than 4 miles. Py at the junction of the streams is just over 3200 feet above the sea. The pass is about 7000.
On the further side also the track is quite plain, pointing down due south-east through a little wood and then over the open country. It takes you down to Prats de Mollo, a jolly little town, the last on the great national road and the highest in the Tech valley. Above it the national road becomes the local road leading to the baths and waters.
So late as the Revolutionary Wars Mollo was of importance and may be again, for the Spanish armies could come over (but not with guns) from the other Mollo, which lies beyond the frontier 7 or 8 miles off south-east, over the Col of Arras. Mollo is a little lower than Py, but the descent upon it is far less steep than was the ascent upon Py. From Mollo it is somewhat more than 10 miles to Arles by the national road down the valley.
The Canigou is so particular a thing that if a man has but little time before him, or if he already knows the other Pyrenees—he might do worse than go to Perpignan and spend a week upon that mountain. It should be remembered that you have a better chance of fine weather there than in any other part of the Pyrenees, and you will usually have dryer days upon the Tech side than upon the Tet side.
With these eight divisions I have roughly covered the chain of the Pyrenees for those who may, like myself, think that all travel on these mountains should be on foot. It is, of course, but a very rough and general survey, but it would give one, all taken together, a comprehensive knowledge of the chain. My limits have necessarily excluded very many valleys, some of which are unknown to me, such as the valley of Isaba. Among those which I have not dealt with should be considered especially the Ribagorza, which is the boundary between the Aragonese and the Catalan tongues, and runs parallel to Pallars or the valley of Esterri, and can be reached from the valley with some difficulty by Espot and the high Portaron above it, or much more easily from Viella in the Val d’Aran, by the high Port de Viella, which leads straight into the Ribagorza and down to Bono. There are also entrances in and out of Andorra, of which I did not speak, notably the Porte Blanche, which you make from Porta in the Val Carol, a mile or two south of Porté. This way involves two cols, one very high one, the Porte Blanche, another lower one immediately after, the Port de Vallcivera. It is, however, the shortest way from a French high road to Andorra the Old. There is another way in and out of Andorra, very little used, by the Col de la Boella from Ordino to the Val Farrera. All the Basque valleys besides those I mention, and notably that of the Isaba, are places that should be known, and of the passages over the range, which I have not dealt with in detail, one, the road from St. Girons to Esterri by the Port de Salau, will soon be an international highway. It presents no difficulties and no very considerable interest. But if the traveller finds himself by some accident in St. Girons with but a day or two in which to see Spain, here is a very easy way of getting over into what is still one of the remotest parts of that country.