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 Anzin it runs 245 km to Anzin; allow about 4 h 13 of riding. It goes by way of Cité Bellevue ancienne, Belfort met Lakenhal and back through Cité Bellevue ancienne. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules.
61 km on Cité Bellevue ancienne → Belfort met Lakenhal.
Anzin, on the northern edge of Valenciennes, is where coal mining in northern France began on an industrial scale. In the eighteenth century, the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin became one of the largest companies in France, and its mines, workers' housing, slag heaps and buildings shaped the landscape of the region. Château Dampierre is one of the buildings linked to that history, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, inscribed in 2012, which preserves more than a hundred sites across a vast area: pits, headframes, miners' cités, churches, schools and the great black spoil heaps known as terrils. The big miners' strike at Anzin in 1884 helped inspire Émile Zola's novel Germinal.
Read the complete Château Dampierre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château Dampierre is where the day begins. Next is Cité Bellevue ancienne.
Cité Bellevue means beautiful view, and in this part of the Pas-de-Calais the joke, whether intended or not, is that the view is of other mining estates and a skyline of terrils. Noyelles-sous-Lens lies right beside Lens, the old capital of the coalfield, in a landscape that feels like one continuous town. The mines here were among the richest in France, and also among the most dangerous. The Courrières disaster of 1906, in which more than a thousand miners died, happened only a few kilometres away, and it remains the worst mining accident in European history.
Read the complete Cité Bellevue ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Bellevue ancienne comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Belfort met Lakenhal.
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.
about 122 km into the recorded legs you reach Belfort met Lakenhal. Next is back through Cité Bellevue ancienne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Bellevue ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité Bellevue ancienne, late in the day. Next is Château Dampierre.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Château Dampierre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Château Dampierre. That is the ride.
Château Dampierre → Cité Bellevue ancienne is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité Bellevue ancienne → Belfort met Lakenhal is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Belfort met Lakenhal → back through Cité Bellevue ancienne is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité Bellevue ancienne → Château Dampierre is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.