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: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Arras it runs 288 km to Arras; allow about 4 h 58 of riding. It goes by way of Terril 140, Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle, Beffroi de Tournai and Béguinage de Kortrijk. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
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 Terril 140.
Rising out of the flat fields north of Douai, the black, cone-shaped hill of Terril 140 is not a natural feature at all: it is a heap of mining waste, the spoil left over from decades of coal extraction. The mining basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a cultural landscape, is studded with hundreds of these terrils, some flat-topped, some pointed, and together with the pitheads, workers' housing and railways they tell the story of an industry that shaped the region for nearly three centuries.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 140 comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle.
Old and new: the label names two generations of company housing at Chabaud-Latour, and walking between them is a short lesson in how mining employers thought about their workers. The older cité is a grid of long brick rows, the corons of Zola's novels, packed close to the pit so that men could be at the shaft in minutes. The newer one, built later, spreads out in pairs and small groups of houses set in gardens, with wider streets and green space, part of a shift towards the garden-city ideal in the early twentieth century. Both belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site.
Read the complete Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 68 km into the recorded legs you reach Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle. Next is Beffroi de Tournai.
Tournai is one of the oldest towns in Belgium, and it does not shout about it. Sitting on the Scheldt, which the French-speaking locals call the Escaut, it was a Roman settlement, then the first capital of the Franks: Childeric I, father of Clovis, was buried here, and when his tomb was found in 1653 it yielded gold, jewels and hundreds of golden bees that later inspired Napoleon's imperial emblem. The belfry on the Grand-Place was begun in the late twelfth century and is considered the oldest in the country. Climb its two hundred and fifty-odd steps and you look down on a town of grey stone and slate, and straight across at the five towers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, a Romanesque and Gothic giant listed by UNESCO in its own right.
Read the complete Beffroi de Tournai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Tournai, about halfway. Next is Béguinage de Kortrijk.
Step through a gate off a busy street in the centre of Kortrijk and the noise falls away. The béguinage is a tiny enclosed village of whitewashed houses, cobbled lanes and a small church, founded in the thirteenth century by Countess Joan of Constantinople for the beguines, lay women who lived a religious life without taking full vows. It is one of the Flemish béguinages that UNESCO listed together in 1998, and although it is small, it has a rare atmosphere of calm. A statue of the countess stands at the entrance.
Read the complete Béguinage de Kortrijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Béguinage de Kortrijk sits at 144 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de Tournai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de Tournai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de Tournai comes up about 179 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 220 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle. Next is back through Terril 140.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 140, late in the day. 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.
The route ends here after 288 km.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Terril 140 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 140 → Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle → Beffroi de Tournai is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Tournai → Béguinage de Kortrijk is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Béguinage de Kortrijk → back through Beffroi de Tournai is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de Tournai → back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle → back through Terril 140 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 140 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.