Mining companies built for rank as well as for need. The ordinary miners got brick cottages in terraces, but the engineers and directors got something grander, detached houses with larger gardens and, for the top man, a house that was called a château and looked like one. Château Mercier at Mazingarbe belongs to that tradition, and the ride titles pair it with the engineers' houses. A walk through the old cité shows you the whole hierarchy of a company town in a few hundred metres, from the pit and the cottages to the engineers' row and the director's lawn. UNESCO's 2012 listing of the mining basin covers this social geography as much as the machinery.
Mazingarbe is also a place of chemistry. The mine at Mazingarbe fed a nearby industrial complex that made fertiliser and chemicals from coal, and the plant has been a feature of the skyline for a century. Vermelles, a few kilometres to the south, had a different fame. In 1915 the village stood near the front line during the Battle of Loos, a failed British offensive in which gas was released and drifted back over the attackers, and the ground around still holds a number of cemeteries, including one known as Dud Corner, with a long wall inscribed with the names of the missing.
The roads here run straight between brick villages, with little elevation and plenty of lorries, and the cobbled sections known as pavé are common on side roads. It is not a place for a spirited ride, but it is a place for a thoughtful one. Early on a cold morning the mist hangs between the terrils and the air smells of coal smoke from old stoves.
Mazingarbe has about seven and a half thousand people, with fuel and a bakery or two, and the larger towns of Lens and Béthune are a short ride off. Take time to read the cemetery walls and note the dates and ages. Few people stay long at Dud Corner, and fewer talk. Then ride to a village square, order a coffee and let the day's pace settle down.