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 Bailleul it runs 265 km to Bailleul; allow about 4 h 11 of riding. The stops in between: Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la, Cité des Soeurs, Terrils 87 et 92 and Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-.
Aire-sur-la-Lys is the kind of small French town that rewards a slow walk with no plan. Its belfry rises from the eighteenth-century town hall on the Grand Place, an elegant classical building topped by a tall tower with a lantern and a carillon, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France. Across the square stands the Bailliage, a richly decorated Renaissance building from around 1600, with arches, carved figures and a little loggia, which once housed the guard and the town's officials. A few streets away, the great collegiate church of Saint-Pierre, built in a flamboyant Gothic style, rises above the rooftops.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- comes up about 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité des Soeurs.
At the western edge of the coalfield, where the plain of the mining basin starts to buckle into the chalk hills of Artois, the town of Barlin grew up around its pits. The Cité des Soeurs is one of its housing estates, rows of brick miners' houses with gardens, and Terril 244, a slag heap now furred with trees, stands nearby like a man-made hill. Both belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site, which covers more than a hundred kilometres of coal country from the Belgian border westwards.
Read the complete Cité des Soeurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 66 km into the recorded legs you reach Cité des Soeurs. Next is Terrils 87 et 92.
From a distance they look like hills, which in this flat country is reason enough to stare. The terrils numbered 87 and 92, on the edge of Noyelles-Godault and Dourges next to Hénin-Beaumont, are spoil heaps from the coal mines of the Nord-Pas de Calais basin, made of the shale and rock that came up with the coal over a century and more of mining. They are part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2012 as a whole cultural landscape: pits, headframes, miners' housing, schools, churches and these artificial black mountains, more than a hundred of which are protected.
Read the complete Terrils 87 et 92 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terrils 87 et 92, about halfway. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Escaudain sits in the old heartland of the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin, the oldest and once the most powerful of the coal companies in northern France, and the landscape around it is pure mining country: rows of brick terraces, spoil heaps, old railway embankments and the occasional headframe standing like a monument. This is the Valenciennes end of the coalfield, close to the Belgian border, and it was here that coal mining in the north began in the eighteenth century. The town and its surroundings form one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, which UNESCO inscribed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain sits at 142 km, about halfway. Next is back through Terrils 87 et 92.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terrils 87 et 92 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terrils 87 et 92 comes up about 169 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cité des Soeurs.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité des Soeurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 202 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cité des Soeurs. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-, late in the day. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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.
The route ends here after 265 km.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- → Cité des Soeurs is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité des Soeurs → Terrils 87 et 92 is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terrils 87 et 92 → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → back through Terrils 87 et 92 is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terrils 87 et 92 → back through Cité des Soeurs is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité des Soeurs → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.