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 Harnes it runs 143 km to Harnes; allow about 2 h 45 of riding. On the way it passes Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d, Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs, Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur and Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres.
Camus Haut lies on the eastern edge of the mining basin, near Annay, Pont-à-Vendin and Harnes, where the canalised Deûle carries barges north towards Lille. The label refers to one of the many mining sites and cités of the area, and while the exact spot is hard to identify from a distance, the landscape tells you what kind of place it is: brick housing estates, old pit heads, spoil heaps going green, and the wide, flat horizon of the Gohelle.
Read the complete Camus Haut write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Camus Haut is where the day begins. Next is Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d.
In the mining towns of northern France, the companies built not only pits and houses but whole communities, with churches, schools, dispensaries and, after the First World War, monuments to the dead. This war memorial and the iron gates of a mining cité in Mazingarbe are small parts of that story, included in the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site. They stand among rows of brick houses, gardens and allotments in a town shaped by coal.
Read the complete Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d comes up about 17 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs.
The coal companies were not short of optimism when they named their housing. In Bruay-la-Buissière, two neighbouring cités were called the New World and the Flowers, and their brick houses with front gardens, laid out along tidy streets, were meant to sell a better life to the families who came from across France, Poland, Italy and North Africa to work the pits. They belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site, and they remain ordinary homes, so look respectfully.
Read the complete Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 36 km into the recorded legs you reach Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs. Next is Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur.
Mining companies built for rank as well as for need. The ordinary miners got brick cottages in terraces, but the engineers and directors got something grander, detached houses with larger gardens and, for the top man, a house that was called a château and looked like one. Château Mercier at Mazingarbe belongs to that tradition, and the ride titles pair it with the engineers' houses. A walk through the old cité shows you the whole hierarchy of a company town in a few hundred metres, from the pit and the cottages to the engineers' row and the director's lawn. UNESCO's 2012 listing of the mining basin covers this social geography as much as the machinery.
Read the complete Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur, about halfway. Next is Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres.
Houdain is a mining town in the Pas-de-Calais, a couple of kilometres from Bruay and a short hop from Béthune, and its workers' estates carry names that read like a municipal promise: Victory and Trees. They belong to the western end of the northern French coalfield, which stretches in a long band across the Nord and Pas-de-Calais and which was the engine of the region for more than two centuries. Here the company built housing on a scale that still surprises. Whole districts of identical brick houses, each with its own garden plot, were laid out in rows and crescents, so that miners and their families would live close to the pit and under the eye of their employer.
Read the complete Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres sits at 66 km, about halfway. Next is back through Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur comes up about 89 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 107 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs. Next is back through Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d, late in the day. Next is Camus Haut.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Camus Haut write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 143 km.
Camus Haut → Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d → Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs → Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur → Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres → back through Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur → back through Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs → back through Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Monument aux morts et grilles de la cité d → Camus Haut is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.