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.
274 km from Tournai to Tournai, about 4 h 43 of riding. It goes by way of Cité du Rivage ancienne, Cité Barrois, Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi and Terril n°10. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
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 Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Brick terraced houses, small gardens and a straight street running toward the Escaut: at first glance the Cité du Rivage in Bruay-sur-l'Escaut looks like any working-class neighbourhood in northern France. It is part of something much larger. In 2012, UNESCO listed the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, a landscape of pit villages, headframes, slag heaps and railways stretching over a hundred kilometres, as a monument to three centuries of coal. This cité is one of its many fragments, an early housing development built by the mining companies to keep their workers close to the pits.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité du Rivage ancienne comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité Barrois.
Rows of red-brick cottages, each with its garden, set along curving streets with trees: the Cité Barrois in Pecquencourt looks almost English, and that is no accident. In the later years of the coal era, the mining companies of northern France built garden cities for their workers, influenced by ideas from across the Channel about healthy housing and green space. This one is part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an entire landscape of pits, slag heaps, workers' housing, schools, churches and railways spread over more than a hundred kilometres.
Read the complete Cité Barrois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 68 km into the recorded legs you reach Cité Barrois. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi.
Flat country hides its stories well, and the strip of land around Vendin-le-Vieil, Pont-à-Vendin and Annay looks at first like any other piece of French Flanders suburbia: rows of brick houses, a canal, a few fields, a tangle of roads. Look again and the pattern reveals itself. The terraced streets are company housing, laid out by mining firms for their workers, and the low hills on the horizon are not hills at all but spoil heaps from the pits that once ran under this ground. The whole Nord-Pas de Calais coal basin was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a living cultural landscape, and the area around Auchy-les-Mines and its neighbours is part of that long chain of pits, cités and terrils stretching across the north of France.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi, about halfway. Next is Terril n°10.
In the western part of the Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin, around Bruay-la-Buissière, Divion and Marles-les-Mines, the horizon is shaped by terrils, the spoil heaps left by more than two centuries of coal mining. Terril number 10 is one of them, a dark cone of shale and waste rock that has slowly turned green as birch, broom and grasses have colonised it. The basin, with its pits, cités, railway lines and spoil heaps, was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape, recognising both the industrial history and the lives of the hundreds of thousands of miners who worked here.
Read the complete Terril n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril n°10 sits at 137 km, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi comes up about 172 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cité Barrois.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Barrois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 206 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cité Barrois. Next is back through Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité du Rivage ancienne, 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 274 km.
Beffroi de Tournai → Cité du Rivage ancienne is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité du Rivage ancienne → Cité Barrois is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité Barrois → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi → Terril n°10 is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril n°10 → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi → back through Cité Barrois is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité Barrois → back through Cité du Rivage ancienne is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité du Rivage ancienne → Beffroi de Tournai is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.