The flat country between Douai and Lens does not look like much from a motorway, but it holds one of the great industrial landscapes of Europe. For more than two centuries coal was dug from under these fields, and the mining basin of the Nord-Pas de Calais was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape of pits, slag heaps, railway lines and workers' housing. The Fosse Cornuault at Évin-Malmaison is one piece of that vast mosaic, a former colliery site with its associated buildings, set among the brick villages of the eastern part of the basin.
The history is deep and often harsh. Coal was found in the area in the eighteenth century, and by the late nineteenth century the mines employed tens of thousands of workers, including waves of immigrants, particularly from Poland and Italy, who came to work underground. Not far from here, in 1906, the Courrières mining disaster killed well over a thousand miners, the worst mining catastrophe in European history. The last pit in the region closed in 1990, just a few kilometres away at the Fosse 9-9bis in Oignies, now a cultural venue with its headframes preserved.
The riding is flat and generally straightforward, with a dense network of roads linking towns and villages. Traffic can be heavy, especially around the larger towns and the motorway junctions, and you will need patience with roundabouts and traffic lights. The landscape has its own beauty, though, especially in the evening light, when the slag heaps, the terrils, stand out against the sky like dark pyramids, some of them now covered in trees and wildflowers. The cobbled sectors of the Paris-Roubaix cycle race lie further to the east, and riding one of them on a motorbike is an experience your fillings will remember.
Évin-Malmaison, Ostricourt and Leforest are all small towns with basic services, and you will find fuel easily throughout the area. The local food is hearty: chips cooked in beef fat, carbonnade flamande, and the strong-smelling Maroilles cheese, best enjoyed with a local beer. The weather is often grey and damp, but that only adds to the atmosphere of the place, which rewards those who take the time to look beyond the surface.