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 154 km round trip from Tournai - roughly 2 h 39 in the saddle. On the way it passes Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple, Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A and Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Black hills on a flat land. That is the image most people keep of the Nord-Pas de Calais coal basin, a band of former mining country stretching about 120 kilometres from the Belgian border westward towards Béthune, where for nearly three centuries coal was dug from deep underground. The slag heaps, the terrils, rise like pyramids above the towns, and the mining villages, the cités, line the streets in rows of brick houses. In 2012 the basin was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised as a living cultural landscape, with over three hundred elements protected.
Read the complete Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple.
A steel tower with a big wheel at the top: once you have seen one headframe, you start to spot them all across the north of France, but each one marks a place where men went down into the dark. The headframe of the Fosse Dutemple, between Valenciennes and Petite-Forêt, is one of the survivors, kept as part of the UNESCO-listed Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin. Under it, cages once dropped miners hundreds of metres to the coal seams; now it stands as a monument, its pulleys still against the sky.
Read the complete Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 42 km into the recorded legs you reach Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A.
Coal made this corner of northern France, and for a century and a half it made it black. The mining landscape listed by UNESCO runs for a hundred and twenty kilometres across the old Nord and Pas-de-Calais coalfield, and the sector at this stop lies in the Valenciennes end of it, close to the Belgian frontier and the river Escaut, which the Belgians call the Scheldt. The pits of Anzin, the company that started the whole business in the middle of the eighteenth century, were the first great mines in France.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A, about halfway. Next is Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle.
France's coalfield is a long, narrow band that runs from Béthune in the west to the Belgian border in the east, and at its eastern end, around Valenciennes, the ground still carries traces of the first mines. The Anzin company, which controlled much of this area in the nineteenth century, dug shafts, built pumping stations and laid out workers' housing, and in 1884 Émile Zola came to the district to research Germinal, his great novel of a miners' strike. The ensemble at La Sentinelle includes the old pumping engine house of the Sarteau pit, a survivor from that early industrial age, and the nearby Cités de Beaurepaire, rows of company housing for miners and their families. The whole mining basin was listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle sits at 77 km, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A comes up about 94 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 110 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple. Next is back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 154 km.
Beffroi de Tournai → Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin → Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple → Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A → Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A → back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple → back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin → Beffroi de Tournai is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.