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 Loos it runs 149 km to Loos; allow about 2 h 37 of riding. The stops in between: Cité des Sports Wingles, Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7, Terril 34 and back through Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7. The line favours views over speed.
Loos is a town on the southwestern edge of Lille, and its town hall belfry is part of the same UNESCO family as the medieval towers of Bruges and Ghent, though it is a much more modern member. In this corner of Europe a belfry was the symbol of a town's independence from lord and church, and when the industrial towns of the Nord built new town halls in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they gave them belfries too, as a statement that they had grown up. Loos's tower, in brick and stone, does exactly that.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos is where the day begins. Next is Cité des Sports Wingles.
Wingles is a town of nine thousand people in the old mining basin, sitting on the edge of the plain where the Lens-Béthune coal fields meet the canal of La Bassée. The coal here was dug from the mid-nineteenth century, and the town still bears the marks: rows of workers' houses, a handful of pit headframes, and slag heaps that rise from the farmland. The sports complex that gives this stop its name is a modern echo of the old social life of the mine, when companies built stadiums, bandstands and gymnasia for their workers, and brass bands and football clubs were as central to the community as the pit itself.
Read the complete Cité des Sports Wingles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité des Sports Wingles comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7.
Picture a pit village at six in the morning in 1950: men walking to the headframe with their lunch tins, the siren calling the shift, the women already up and stoking the stoves, children getting ready for the company school. The ensemble around Fosse n°7, near Maisnil-lès-Ruitz and Barlin, preserves the setting for that daily routine: the pit buildings, the housing, the paths between them, and the terril rising nearby. It was a self-contained world, owned and run by the mining company, which provided houses, coal for heating, schools, churches and even doctors, in exchange for loyalty and hard work. The site is one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin on the UNESCO list.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 49 km into the recorded legs you reach Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7. Next is Terril 34.
A terril is a slag heap, a mountain of waste rock dumped beside a coal mine, and in the flat land of northern France these man-made hills are the closest thing to relief for miles around. Terril 34 is one of hundreds that dot the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, a UNESCO site since 2012, which recognises not only the heaps but also the pithead frames, miners' housing estates, schools, churches and railway lines that made up the landscape of coal mining in the region for nearly three centuries. This one sits near Norrent-Fontes and Lillers, at the western end of the basin, where it meets the chalk hills of Artois.
Read the complete Terril 34 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 34, about halfway. Next is back through Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 sits at 103 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cité des Sports Wingles.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité des Sports Wingles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité des Sports Wingles comes up about 128 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos closes the day.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos → Cité des Sports Wingles is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité des Sports Wingles → Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 → Terril 34 is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 34 → back through Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 → back through Cité des Sports Wingles is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité des Sports Wingles → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.