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.
A 253 km round trip from Douai - roughly 4 h 22 in the saddle. On the way it passes Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait, Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor and back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The belfry of Douai rises above the town hall like a stone exclamation mark, a tall, square tower with a corner turret and a gilded lion at the top. Belfries were the symbols of medieval towns in Flanders and northern France, built to show that a town had won its freedoms, and to hold the bell that called citizens to meet, fight or put out fires. Douai's was begun in the fourteenth century and finished in the fifteenth, and it is one of the group of belfries of Belgium and France that UNESCO lists together.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai is where the day begins. Next is Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait.
Mining companies in northern France did more than dig coal. They built housing, schools, churches, shops and clinics, so that workers' lives were shaped from birth to burial by the company, and the Goutte de Lait, the Drop of Milk, is a piece of that system. The name refers to the charitable clinics set up across France from the late nineteenth century to give mothers advice and clean milk for their babies, in an age when infant mortality was terrifying. In Auchel, the building belonged to the mining community, and it is listed as part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Read the complete Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor.
Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic stops under the Menin Gate in Ypres, and buglers from the local fire brigade sound the Last Post in memory of the soldiers of the British Empire who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War. The ceremony has been held almost every evening since 1928, interrupted only during the German occupation in the Second World War, and it draws crowds of all ages, many of them descendants of the fallen. The gate itself is inscribed with the names of more than fifty thousand soldiers whose bodies were never found. It is one of the sites included in the World Heritage inscription of the Funerary and Memory Sites of the First World War, inscribed in 2023.
Read the complete Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 126 km into the recorded legs you reach Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor. Next is back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait, late in the day. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai. That is the ride.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai → Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait → Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor is 65 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor → back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait is 65 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.