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 Tournai it runs 151 km to Tournai; allow about 2 h 36 of riding. The stops in between: Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, Fosse Delloye, Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A and back through Fosse Delloye. 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 Fosse Delloye.
The name on the label belongs to the most famous pit in the whole northern coalfield. Fosse Delloye, at Lewarde a short ride west of here, closed in 1971 and became the Centre Historique Minier, France's largest mining museum, where former miners once guided visitors through reconstructed galleries and the old lamp rooms, showers and machine halls still stand as they were left. The point itself, though, sits beside Denain on the Escaut, and Denain deserves a story of its own.
Read the complete Fosse Delloye write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 51 km into the recorded legs you reach Fosse Delloye. 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 back through Fosse Delloye.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fosse Delloye write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fosse Delloye sits at 101 km, about halfway. 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 comes up about 126 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Beffroi de Tournai closes the day.
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 → Fosse Delloye is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fosse Delloye → Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers du secteur d’A → back through Fosse Delloye is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fosse Delloye → back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin is 25 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.