Sallaumines is one of those towns that merges into its neighbours until you cannot tell where one stops, and the whole built-up band between Lens and Hénin-Beaumont is mining country. Cité Deblock is one of the company housing estates that went up in the twentieth century as the mines expanded, with brick houses in rows or pairs, gardens at the front and back, and a layout planned by engineers who believed good housing kept a workforce loyal. The UNESCO listing of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais mining basin in 2012 covers a number of such estates, because together they show how an entire society was built around coal.
Lens, three kilometres to the south, is the town to know. It is home to the Louvre-Lens, a branch of the Paris museum that opened in 2012 on the site of a former pit, in a long, low glass-and-aluminium building set in a landscaped park. It is also home to one of France's best-supported football clubs, Racing Club de Lens, whose supporters wear red and yellow and fill the Bollaert stadium with a noise that locals say you can hear across the town. Just outside Lens, the twin slag heaps of the old pits 11 and 19 at Loos-en-Gohelle are among the highest in Europe, and you can walk to the top of them.
For a rider, the plain is a flat grid of small roads with traffic lights, roundabouts and sections of cobbles. Take care at junctions, because the old setts become treacherous when wet. The more interesting riding is to the south-west, where the land rolls up into the Artois hills, with Vimy Ridge and the Canadian memorial about eight kilometres away. The great white memorial, surrounded by preserved trenches and shell-pocked ground, is one of the most moving places in northern France, and the grassy slopes around it are fenced because of unexploded shells.
Fuel and food are in the next street. Sallaumines, Méricourt and Noyelles-sous-Lens each have about ten thousand people or fewer, and the surrounding towns are bigger. Try a plate of frites with a carbonade or a waffle with sugar from a baker, and have a coffee in the square. The weather is mild but changeable, and the sky large.