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 Ieper it runs 153 km to Ieper; allow about 2 h 38 of riding. It goes by way of Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières, Fosse n°5, Terril 140 and back through Fosse n°5. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules.
This part of the ride is 25 km of Belfort met Lakenhal → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières.
Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic stops under the Menin Gate in Ieper and buglers of the local fire brigade play the Last Post for the soldiers of the British Empire who died in the Ypres Salient and have no known grave. The ceremony has been held almost every evening since 1928, interrupted only during the German occupation in the Second World War. Walk from the gate to the Grote Markt and you come to the Cloth Hall and its belfry, a huge Gothic building that dominated medieval Flanders, when Ypres was one of the great cloth towns of Europe.
Read the complete Belfort met Lakenhal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Belfort met Lakenhal is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières.
Armentières is a textile town on the river Lys, right on the Belgian border, a quarter of an hour west of Lille. Its name is familiar to many English speakers from the bawdy marching song of the First World War, Mademoiselle from Armentières, which British soldiers sang on their way to the front lines nearby. The town paid a terrible price for being so close to that front: it was shelled, occupied and largely destroyed by 1918. The town hall and its belfry were rebuilt in the 1920s and 1930s in a confident Flemish style, and the tower now belongs to the UNESCO group of belfries of Belgium and France.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fosse n°5.
Douvrin, Billy-Berclau and Wingles form a little triangle of brick towns at the northern edge of the Lens coalfield, and the old pit known as Fosse n°5 sits among them. It is not a famous site and does not need to be: its value lies in being one of the many pieces that make up the mining landscape UNESCO listed in 2012, a network of pits, housing estates, slag heaps, railways and public buildings stretching for over a hundred kilometres across the north of France. Seen from the saddle, the area is a patchwork of cités, fields, canals and newer industrial estates, with the occasional terril breaking the skyline.
Read the complete Fosse n°5 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 52 km into the recorded legs you reach Fosse n°5. Next is Terril 140.
Rising out of the flat fields north of Douai, the black, cone-shaped hill of Terril 140 is not a natural feature at all: it is a heap of mining waste, the spoil left over from decades of coal extraction. The mining basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a cultural landscape, is studded with hundreds of these terrils, some flat-topped, some pointed, and together with the pitheads, workers' housing and railways they tell the story of an industry that shaped the region for nearly three centuries.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 140, about halfway. Next is back through Fosse n°5.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fosse n°5 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fosse n°5 sits at 102 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières comes up about 129 km into the recorded legs. Next is Belfort met Lakenhal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Belfort met Lakenhal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Belfort met Lakenhal closes the day.
Belfort met Lakenhal → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières → Fosse n°5 is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fosse n°5 → Terril 140 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 140 → back through Fosse n°5 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fosse n°5 → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières → Belfort met Lakenhal is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.