A dispensary may seem an odd thing to visit, but this is a monument to something remarkable. In the nineteenth century the coal companies of northern France built housing, schools, churches and clinics for their workers, partly out of paternalism and partly to keep a stable workforce, and the miners themselves set up mutual aid societies, the sociétés de secours mutuel, to pay for doctors, medicines and funerals. The dispensary at Bully-les-Mines belongs to that world of care and control, and it is one of the buildings that explain why UNESCO listed the whole mining basin in 2012. The brick architecture has a plain, solid dignity, and the sense of a community looking after its own is easy to feel.
The population here is varied. In the 1920s the mines recruited thousands of workers from Poland, and the families who came stayed, so that Polish surnames are common in the basin and Polish churches and cultural associations still exist. Italians, Belgians and North Africans came as well, and the local identity is a mixture of all of them, held together by shared work and shared dangers. Grenay and Bully-les-Mines were both pit towns, with whole districts of corons laid out in straight rows around a central church or school.
After the mines closed, the region had to reinvent itself, and the slag heaps have been turned into parks, ski slopes and nature reserves. The twin heaps at Loos-en-Gohelle, a short ride to the north, are the highest in Europe, with a hiking trail to the top and a view across the flat country to Arras and Lille. On a clear day the climb is rewarding.
Riding here is easy and flat, with long straight roads, cobbled sections in the town centres, and plenty of traffic around Lens. Bully-les-Mines, Grenay and Mazingarbe all have fuel stations, supermarkets and bakeries, so fuel is no problem. A traditional lunch of frites and a stew, with a Belgian-style beer, is a good way to end the stop. Spring and autumn are best.