Lens still wears its history on the surface. The town was flattened in the First World War, which fought over it for most of four years, and rebuilt in brick and concrete in the years after, so what you ride through now is mostly the work of the 1920s and 30s. The Maison syndicale, the union hall, is one of the buildings that belong to that rebuilding and to the world of the pits that surrounded the town, when coal paid the wages and the union bargained for the men who went down. It stands as a reminder that this was a place of organised labour as much as of industry.
Around the town the story deepens. At Courrières, a few kilometres east, an explosion in March 1906 killed more than a thousand miners, one of the worst mining disasters in European history, and the strikes that followed shook the country. To the west the twin slag heaps at Loos-en-Gohelle, the highest in Europe, rise like a pair of pyramids over the plain, and a short climb on foot brings a view over the whole basin. Vimy Ridge, where the Canadians fought in 1917, is a few minutes north, and its memorial is one of the most moving places in France.
The riding is easy in an almost lazy way. Roads are flat, straight and often cobbled, and the whole region is a magnet for cycling fans, so expect the occasional peloton on a weekend. Lens has thirty-eight thousand people and fuel at every corner. The Louvre-Lens museum, opened in 2012 on a former mining site, is a low glass-and-aluminium building set in a park, and worth an hour. The stadium, home to the football club that every local supports with unusual passion, wraps the town in red and yellow on match days, and traffic on those days is best avoided.
Eat in the town. A plate of local cheese from Maroilles, or a waterzooi, will keep you going. In winter the weather is raw and grey, and the damp gets under every layer. Spring and early autumn bring softer light, and the old brick houses glow when the sun finally breaks.