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.
410 km from Mazingarbe to Mazingarbe, about 7 h 04 of riding. On the way it passes Terril 140, Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle, Major Mining Sites of Wallonia and Petit Béguinage de Gent. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle.
Old and new: the label names two generations of company housing at Chabaud-Latour, and walking between them is a short lesson in how mining employers thought about their workers. The older cité is a grid of long brick rows, the corons of Zola's novels, packed close to the pit so that men could be at the shaft in minutes. The newer one, built later, spreads out in pairs and small groups of houses set in gardens, with wider streets and green space, part of a shift towards the garden-city ideal in the early twentieth century. Both belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site.
Read the complete Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 68 km into the recorded legs you reach Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle. Next is Major Mining Sites of Wallonia.
Grand-Hornu, on the edge of the Borinage coalfield west of Mons, looks less like a coal mine than a neoclassical palace. In the early nineteenth century the industrialist Henri De Gorge built it as a model colliery, with workshops, offices and stables arranged around a vast oval courtyard of brick arches, and hundreds of houses for workers, each with its own garden, laid out in streets around it. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, combining industry and housing in one planned complex. Mining ended in the mid-twentieth century, and after years of neglect the site was restored. Today it houses a museum of contemporary art and a design centre, and it is one of the four Major Mining Sites of Wallonia listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Major Mining Sites of Wallonia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Major Mining Sites of Wallonia, about halfway. Next is Petit Béguinage de Gent.
Push open a gate off a busy Ghent street and the noise drops away. The Klein Begijnhof, the Small Béguinage, is a walled enclave of whitewashed and brick houses with stepped gables around a green courtyard and a Baroque church. Béguines were lay women who lived in community, devoted to prayer and work but without taking permanent vows, and this béguinage was founded in the thirteenth century. Most of the present buildings date from the seventeenth century. Together with other Flemish béguinages, it is on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and it remains one of the calmest places in the city.
Read the complete Petit Béguinage de Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Petit Béguinage de Gent sits at 205 km, about halfway. Next is back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Major Mining Sites of Wallonia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia comes up about 297 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 342 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle. Next is back through Terril 140.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 140, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 410 km.
Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur → Terril 140 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 140 → Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle → Major Mining Sites of Wallonia is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Major Mining Sites of Wallonia → Petit Béguinage de Gent is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Petit Béguinage de Gent → back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia → back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle → back through Terril 140 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 140 → Château Mercier et maisons d’ingénieur is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.