Rows of red-brick cottages, each with its garden, set along curving streets with trees: the Cité Barrois in Pecquencourt looks almost English, and that is no accident. In the later years of the coal era, the mining companies of northern France built garden cities for their workers, influenced by ideas from across the Channel about healthy housing and green space. This one is part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an entire landscape of pits, slag heaps, workers' housing, schools, churches and railways spread over more than a hundred kilometres.
Pecquencourt lies between Douai and Valenciennes, in the valley of the Scarpe, a flat country of canals, poplars and old industrial towns. Just a few kilometres away in Lewarde, the former Delloye pit is now the Centre Historique Minier, the biggest mining museum in France, where former miners have guided visitors through reconstructed galleries. It is the best place to understand what life here was like: the shifts, the danger, the strikes, the waves of immigration from Poland, Italy and North Africa that built these communities.
Riding here is not about curves. The roads are flat, straight and often busy, with plenty of roundabouts, speed bumps and towns that blur into each other. What the area has instead is texture: the conical black slag heaps, the terrils, rising out of the fields; the headframes of old pits; the brick everywhere. Some of the terrils are now nature reserves, home to rare plants and birds that thrive on the warm, dry slopes. Cobblestone lanes, made famous by the Paris-Roubaix cycle race, still cross the countryside around Wallers and the Arenberg forest nearby. On a motorcycle they are bone-shaking and treacherous in the wet, so treat them with respect.
Pecquencourt has the basics, and Douai, a short ride west, is a handsome town with a famous Gothic belfry, plenty of cafés, and every service you need, including fuel. The weather is changeable: rain can arrive at any time of year, and wind blows unchecked across the flat land. Spring and late summer are the best seasons. Stop for a beer in a local café, ask about the pits, and you may well hear a story or two from someone whose grandfather worked underground.