Denain is remembered in French history for an afternoon in July 1712, when Marshal Villars crossed the Scheldt and smashed an allied army under Prince Eugene of Savoy, a victory that rescued France in the closing years of the War of the Spanish Succession and is still marked in the town. The Fosse Mathilde belongs to a later and quieter story. A fosse is the northern word for a pit, and these shafts were named for company directors and their families, so Mathilde was a lady before she was a hole in the ground.
Denain's wealth in the nineteenth century came from coal and then from steel, and the Anzin company, one of the biggest employers in France, sank pit after pit in the surrounding fields. Steelworks followed, and the town's population swelled and then, when the furnaces closed in the later twentieth century, fell. Standing here you see low brick halls, remnants of the pit head and the shape of terrils along the horizon. The scale of the buildings is modest next to the weight of the history, and that, oddly, is what moves people.
The riding is flat and urban, a grid of straight roads, level crossings and the odd patch of cobbles. Denain is a busy town, with roadworks and slow traffic at the usual hours. It is no place for corners, but it is good for an unhurried look at how industry carves a place into shape. Surfaces are patched in many places, and the pavé on some side streets is slippery when wet.
Fuel and food are easy in Denain. A short run to the west brings you to the Arenberg forest and the cobbled sector that appears in cycling lore, which you should attempt only on a dry day. In winter the landscape is grey and forbidding, but spring puts fresh green on the terrils and a softer light on the brick.