In the centre of Auchel, the war memorial stands as it does in every French town and village, listing the names of the men who died in the First and Second World Wars, and in mining towns these lists are often heartbreakingly long. But the memorials of the coalfield have a particular resonance, because the front line of the First World War ran through the edge of the mining basin, only a few kilometres east of here. The Germans occupied Lens and the eastern pits for most of the war, and when they withdrew in 1918, they flooded and sabotaged the mines, which took years to restore. Auchel and the western towns, on the Allied side, kept producing coal for the war effort under constant pressure.
The battlefields of Artois lie close by. The ridge of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, about twenty kilometres to the east, holds the largest French military cemetery, with tens of thousands of graves, and next to it the Ring of Remembrance, inaugurated in 2014, lists the names of nearly six hundred thousand soldiers of all nations who died in the region, alphabetically and without distinction of nationality or rank. Vimy Ridge, a little further on, has the towering Canadian memorial, honouring the Canadian soldiers who took the ridge in April 1917.
The riding from Auchel toward the battlefields is a mix of mining towns and open country. The roads east pass through Bruay-la-Buissière and Barlin before climbing onto the Lorette ridge, with views over the plain of Lens and the terrils on the horizon. The roads around Vimy and Souchez are quiet, with gentle curves and good surfaces, and the cemeteries and memorials appear constantly, a solemn landscape. Weather in the region is often grey, with rain and wind, and the ridge can be cold even in summer. Riding slowly is the only proper way here.
Auchel has fuel, cafés and shops, and the larger towns along the way have more services. The memorial sites have visitor centres, and the Lens' 14-18 museum at Souchez explains the war in the region. Take a moment at the Auchel memorial to read the names, then ride east to Lorette and walk around the Ring of Remembrance. It is one of the most moving places in Europe, and a reminder of how heavily the war fell on this land.