CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Arras it runs 185 km to Arras; allow about 3 h 19 of riding. It goes by way of Cité n°10, Cité de Rimbert, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul and back through Cité de Rimbert. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Arras has two great squares, the Grand-Place and the Place des Héros, surrounded by tall Flemish-baroque houses with curved gables and arcades, and towering above them is the belfry of the town hall, over seventy metres high. It looks medieval, but most of it is a careful reconstruction: Arras was devastated by German artillery during the First World War, when the front line ran just east of the town for years, and the belfry was destroyed in 1914. After the war, the people of Arras rebuilt it, along with the squares, and today it is one of the belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is where the day begins. Next is Cité n°10.
Sains-en-Gohelle is a former coal town in the heart of the Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin, and Cité n°10 is one of its old mining estates, rows of brick houses built for miners and their families around a pithead. The basin, which stretches about 120 kilometres from the Belgian border towards the west, was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, and the cités, the slag heaps and the headframes are its most visible remains.
Read the complete Cité n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité n°10 comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité de Rimbert.
West of Béthune, the coalfield starts to run out of flat land. The first chalk hills of Artois rise around Auchel and Cauchy-à-la-Tour, and the pit villages climb their slopes in neat rows of brick. The Cité de Rimbert is one of these, built by the mining company of Marles to house its workers, and it belongs to the long necklace of sites in the UNESCO-listed mining basin. Its houses, gardens and straight streets are a textbook example of company planning, with every family given a home, a vegetable plot and a short walk to the pit.
Read the complete Cité de Rimbert write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 48 km into the recorded legs you reach Cité de Rimbert. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul.
Bailleul sits in French Flanders, so close to the Belgian border that you can hear Flemish place names on every signpost, and its town hall belfry, rising over the main square with a pointed spire and a carillon, looks every bit as Flemish as the towers of Ypres or Bruges. Like much of the town, it is a rebuilding: Bailleul was almost entirely destroyed in the spring of 1918, during the German offensive in Flanders, and was reconstructed in the 1920s in a neo-Flemish style of brick, stepped gables and decorative stonework. The belfry is one of the belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul, about halfway. Next is back through Cité de Rimbert.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité de Rimbert write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité de Rimbert sits at 122 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cité n°10.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité n°10 comes up about 160 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras closes the day.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Cité n°10 is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité n°10 → Cité de Rimbert is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité de Rimbert → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul → back through Cité de Rimbert is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité de Rimbert → back through Cité n°10 is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité n°10 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.