Of course, if one comes to Pau merely for enjoyment, hotel life may
be preferable to that in a pension, though our experiences of the
latter mode have been very pleasant ones. It is so easy to make up
a small party for a drive or a picnic, and being all in one house
there is but little chance of any mishaps before starting, such as
individuals forgetting the time that had been fixed and keeping the
rest waiting. Above all, when planning a tour into the Pyrenees, it
is essentially necessary to form a party of some sort, if the trip
is to be carried out in the spring; for although, as we shall
endeavour to show later, the scenery is then at its best, still,
since it is not _the_ season, only one or two hotels are open in
each resort, and society is "nil."

Then further, when people are going to travel in company for
several weeks it is well that at least they should know something
of one another, for if they all commenced "pulling different ways"
up in the mountains, the safety, or at any rate the composure of
each, would be likely to suffer. My own relations, who were with me
at first, left for England long before the mountain trip was
arranged, but we made up a very pleasant quartette before the time
for starting arrived, and accordingly visited Pau in company as
well as the mountains. This quartette consisted of Mrs. and Miss
Blunt, Mr. Sydney and myself, and though it will be seen by
subsequent chapters that the trio decided on staying a fortnight at
Biarritz in preference to following my example and spending the
time at Bagnères de Bigorre, yet we made arrangements to meet
either at Lourdes or Argelès and thenceforward to travel in
company.