Lens is a mining town that was flattened in the First World War and rebuilt in brick, and the monument to the dead of 1914 to 1918 stands as a reminder of what happened here. Lines of trenches ran across this plain for years, and the surrounding ridges, Vimy and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, were the scene of huge battles. At Vimy, the great white Canadian memorial stands on the ridge, commemorating the attack of April 1917 in which Canadian troops took the hill, and the preserved trenches and tunnels can be visited. At Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, a vast French military cemetery and a lantern tower hold the remains of tens of thousands of soldiers. They are quiet places, and the silence is part of the experience.
The mining story is just as present. Fosse n°13 bis, on this ride, is one of the pits in the basin protected by UNESCO as a cultural landscape, and the coal fields employed tens of thousands of people for generations. In the middle of Lens, on the site of an old pit, stands the Louvre-Lens, a long, low gallery of glass and aluminium opened in 2012, which brought a branch of the Parisian museum to a place that had been written off. Its location in a former mining town is no accident, and the building and the park around it are worth an hour.
Lens also has football. The Racing Club de Lens, known as the Sang et Or, the blood and gold, plays in the Stade Bollaert-Delelis, and on a match day the town fills with fans in red and yellow and the noise is extraordinary. The supporters are among the most loyal in France.
For a rider, this is flat, gritty country, with a mix of motorways, town streets and quiet roads between slag heaps. The surface is uneven, there are speed cameras and the traffic can be dense. Fuel is easy to find, since Lens, Loison-sous-Lens and the neighbouring towns have stations and supermarkets. Come in spring or autumn, and take care on wet cobbles.