Lens station looks like a locomotive, which is exactly what its architects intended. The Art Deco building, completed in the 1920s to replace a station destroyed in the First World War, has a long low front with a tall central block that suggests a train at speed, and its brick and stone are laid out with real flair. Inside and out it was designed to tell people that this was a town that had survived and meant to thrive, and few stations of its date achieve the effect so well.
Lens was almost wiped off the map in the First World War. The town stood on the front line, and by 1918 most of its buildings had been flattened. Rebuilding gave it an Art Deco character, and you can see it in the streets around the station. A short walk takes you to the Louvre-Lens, a branch of the Paris museum that opened in 2012 on the site of an old pit, designed as a long, low glass and aluminium building that reflects the sky. The gallery is full of well-lit space, and entry to the main collection has often been free or cheap.
The Cité Crombez is one of the mining estates of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, which UNESCO inscribed in 2012. Rows of brick houses, neat gardens and the patterns of company planning give it a distinct and rather moving atmosphere. Lens is also the home of RC Lens, whose red-and-yellow supporters fill the Bollaert-Delelis stadium, and the town's football culture is as much a part of its identity as the mines.
For riders, Lens is a hub rather than a destination, and a very easy one to reach, since it sits at the meeting point of motorways and main roads from Paris, Lille and the coast. The landscape is flat, the roads are mostly straight and surfaces vary, with occasional cobbled stretches. Fine days are best, because rain on cobbles is greasy.
Lens has thirty-eight thousand people, so fuel, parking and food are easy to find. Try a plate of local cheese, such as Maroilles, or a waffle with a coffee in a café near the station.