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 Anzin it runs 264 km to Anzin; allow about 4 h 11 of riding. On the way it passes Fosse n°2 de Flines, Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval, Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait and Monument Emile Basly. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
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 Fosse n°2 de Flines.
The headframe is the giveaway. In the low, watery country between Lallaing, Anhiers and Flines-lez-Raches, the steel or concrete winding towers of old coal pits still stand as markers, and Fosse n°2 de Flines is one of the sites that recall the industry that shaped this corner of the Douai area. A fosse in the local vocabulary is a pit with its shafts, buildings and spoil heap, and around each one a small world grew: rows of brick housing, a church, a school, and the company offices that ran the lives of everyone underground and above it.
Read the complete Fosse n°2 de Flines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse n°2 de Flines comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval.
The flat coalfield of northern France has one real hill near Liévin, and on top of it stand two tall white pylons carved with figures of grief. This is Vimy Ridge, taken by the Canadian Corps in April 1917, and the Canadian National Vimy Memorial looks out over the mining country below. Down on the plain, in Avion and Liévin, Pinchonval is a cité, a miners' housing estate of brick houses and gardens, and with dozens of other sites it makes up the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, a World Heritage Site since 2012.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval. Next is Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait.
Mining companies in northern France did more than dig coal. They built housing, schools, churches, shops and clinics, so that workers' lives were shaped from birth to burial by the company, and the Goutte de Lait, the Drop of Milk, is a piece of that system. The name refers to the charitable clinics set up across France from the late nineteenth century to give mothers advice and clean milk for their babies, in an age when infant mortality was terrifying. In Auchel, the building belonged to the mining community, and it is listed as part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Read the complete Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait, about halfway. Next is Monument Emile Basly.
Émile Basly was a miner who became a union leader, a deputy and for a long time the mayor of Lens, and his monument stands in the town as a salute to the people who worked underground. He led the great strike of 1884 at Anzin, which inspired Zola's Germinal, and later rose to national politics as a socialist. In Lens, a town of over thirty-eight thousand people at the heart of the Pas-de-Calais coalfield, he remains a local hero. The town was razed in the First World War and rebuilt in the 1920s, so much of the centre has the brick-and-concrete look of that rebuilding.
Read the complete Monument Emile Basly write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument Emile Basly sits at 138 km, about halfway. Next is back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait comes up about 162 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 195 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval. Next is back through Fosse n°2 de Flines.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fosse n°2 de Flines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fosse n°2 de Flines, 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.
The route ends here after 264 km.
Château Dampierre → Fosse n°2 de Flines is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fosse n°2 de Flines → Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval → Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait → Monument Emile Basly is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Monument Emile Basly → back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers des Pinchonval → back through Fosse n°2 de Flines is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fosse n°2 de Flines → Château Dampierre is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.