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.
A 192 km round trip from Roost-Warendin - roughly 2 h 55 in the saddle. It goes by way of Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm, Terril Renard and back through Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm.
The tall steel frame that stands over a coal pit shaft is called a chevalement in French, and a headframe in English, and in the old mining basin of northern France they are the cathedrals of a vanished industry. This one stands at the Fosse n°9, a few kilometres north of Douai, in the plain of the Pévèle, where coal was dug for more than two centuries. The basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais stretches for over a hundred kilometres across flat farmland, and its pits, slag heaps, workers' villages and railway lines are now protected by UNESCO, listed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape. The last pit closed in 1990, and the people here still talk about the mine in the present tense.
Read the complete Chevalement de la fosse n°9 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chevalement de la fosse n°9 is where the day begins. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Escaudain sits in the old heartland of the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin, the oldest and once the most powerful of the coal companies in northern France, and the landscape around it is pure mining country: rows of brick terraces, spoil heaps, old railway embankments and the occasional headframe standing like a monument. This is the Valenciennes end of the coalfield, close to the Belgian border, and it was here that coal mining in the north began in the eighteenth century. The town and its surroundings form one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, which UNESCO inscribed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm.
In 1757, a group of aristocrats and entrepreneurs founded the Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin to work the coal seams found under the plains near Valenciennes. It grew into one of the largest industrial companies in France, owning dozens of pits, thousands of workers' houses and its own schools, churches and shops. The ensemble here at Fresnes-sur-Escaut, close to the Belgian border, includes buildings connected with the company's long history, and it is part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site.
Read the complete Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 64 km into the recorded legs you reach Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm. Next is Terril Renard.
Climb the Renard slag heap near Denain and you are standing on two centuries of work. Terrils are the waste rock hauled out of a mine in wagons and tipped, one load after another, until the pile became a hill. This one, the Fox, lies barely a kilometre and a half from the middle of Denain, a town of twenty-one thousand people that grew fat on coal and steel. It is named after the Renard pit, and it was down the Renard pit in 1884 that Émile Zola was lowered while he researched Germinal, notebook in hand, listening to the men who worked the seam.
Read the complete Terril Renard write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril Renard, about halfway. Next is back through Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm sits at 99 km, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain comes up about 167 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chevalement de la fosse n°9.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement de la fosse n°9 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chevalement de la fosse n°9 closes the day.
Chevalement de la fosse n°9 → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm → Terril Renard is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril Renard → back through Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → Chevalement de la fosse n°9 is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.