A kilometre down the road from the workers' housing of Guesnain stands the best place in France to understand what coal really meant. The Centre Historique Minier at Lewarde occupies the old Delloye pit, which closed in 1971, and it walks you through the whole life of a mine: the lamp room, the showers where miners hung their clothes on chains up to the ceiling, the stables for the pit ponies, and a reconstructed gallery underground where you hear the noise of the picks and the creak of the props. Come here first, and every terrace and terril you pass afterwards will make more sense.
Guesnain's own cités tell the story in brick. The mining companies built housing in successive styles: the early corons, long monotonous rows of identical houses fronting the street, then the cités pavillonnaires with pairs of houses set in gardens, and later the garden cities with curving streets, trees and a more generous layout, a shift driven partly by paternalism and partly by the need to attract and keep workers. Here near Douai, all the patterns sit close together, and the estates are among the components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin on the UNESCO list since 2012. Look for the details: the outhouses at the end of the gardens, the numbering on the doors, the communal ovens and the little chapels.
The riding is gentle and slow, through towns that blend into each other and farmland between them. Douai, a short ride north, has a magnificent Gothic belfry with a carillon, also on the UNESCO list, and the roads south toward the Ostrevent and the Scarpe valley open up into wider fields with long straights. Expect roundabouts, speed humps and pavé on old streets, and remember that rain turns those cobbles into ice. Wind can be strong across the open plain, and grey skies are the norm rather than the exception, though a sunny evening makes the brick glow.
Sin-le-Noble, about two kilometres away, has fuel, supermarkets and bakeries, and Douai has cafés, brasseries and restaurants of every kind. The museum itself has somewhere to eat, and the local food is northern comfort fare: carbonnade, potjevleesch, a cold terrine of mixed meats in jelly, and maroilles, a pungent cheese. Allow a couple of hours for the museum, then ride slowly through Guesnain to see the estates with fresh eyes.