The Coron des 120 is among the most famous rows of miners' houses in France, partly because a film crew chose it. A coron is a long terrace of identical brick cottages built by a mining company, and this one, with its endless line of doors, chimneys and small gardens, was used in the 1993 film of Germinal, Zola's novel of the miners' strike. It lies near Anzin and Petite-Forêt, in the Valenciennes area, at the heart of the mining basin that UNESCO listed in 2012.
What you notice most is the scale of the company's thinking. Rows of this kind were designed to house a workforce close to the pit, and each family had a few rooms, a garden and an outbuilding. The bricks are dark red, the roofs grey slate, and the effect, even now, is of order and uniformity, with a little human variety in the paint of doors and the flowers in the front gardens. The old pits have gone, but the houses endure, lived in and loved.
Riding here is pleasantly flat. Roads from Anzin through the forest of Raismes, St-Amand and Wallers are lined with trees and brick houses, and the traffic is moderate. The Arenberg site, with its great steel pithead frame, is another film location and a major heritage attraction, and it stands only a few kilometres away. Cobblestones appear unexpectedly on minor roads, so slow down on wet days. The best months are May and September, when the forest is green and the light is soft.
Anzin has over fourteen thousand people and Petite-Forêt five thousand, so you are never short of either. The Anzin company traces its beginnings to the finding of coal at nearby Fresnes in 1720, an event that launched French deep mining. The company grew into one of the largest in the country, and its legacy is written in the streets and chimneys around you. A visit here is a small lesson in how a landscape of work gets made.