The tall steel frame that stands over a coal pit shaft is called a chevalement in French, and a headframe in English, and in the old mining basin of northern France they are the cathedrals of a vanished industry. This one stands at the Fosse n°9, a few kilometres north of Douai, in the plain of the Pévèle, where coal was dug for more than two centuries. The basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais stretches for over a hundred kilometres across flat farmland, and its pits, slag heaps, workers' villages and railway lines are now protected by UNESCO, listed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape. The last pit closed in 1990, and the people here still talk about the mine in the present tense.
The slag heaps, called terrils, are the other great feature. Some have been planted with birch and pine and are now nature reserves, and a few stand more than a hundred metres high, a strange conical hill in the flattest of plains. The two at Loos-en-Gohelle are the highest in Europe. The miners' houses, the corons, stand in long red brick terraces, each with a garden for vegetables and a shed for pigeons, and the people who live in them are famous for their warmth and their dry humour. The local dialect, called ch'ti, was made known to the world by a comedy film.
The food is hearty. Frites in paper cones, carbonnade flamande, a beef and beer stew, and maroilles, a strong, orange-rinded cheese, are the staples, and the local beers are good. A Sunday lunch here is long.
The riding is flat and easy, in a landscape of beet fields and long straight roads, with farm tracks and villages with brick churches. Cobbled stretches, famous from the Paris-Roubaix cycle race, lie to the east, near Wallers and Arenberg, and are rough and slippery for a motorcycle, so take care. Wind is strong on open ground. Roost-Warendin has fuel and bakeries, Raimbeaucourt and Râches are smaller villages, and Douai has everything. The best time is spring or early autumn, when the light is soft and the fields are green or gold.