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.
273 km from Liévin to Liévin, about 4 h 42 of riding. It goes by way of Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle, Het Belfort of Halletoren and back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Number 1 bis at Liévin was one of the shafts of the old Compagnie des mines de Liévin, and its headframe still stands, a lean tower against a sky that is often low and grey. It is protected as part of the Mining Basin World Heritage Site, listed in 2012, together with the terrils, the cités and a hundred or so other elements across the old coalfield. What strikes you is how ordinary it looks, a plain frame in an urban setting, and yet it stands for generations of men who went down in cages and came back up with faces black with coal.
Read the complete Chevalement du n°1 bis de Liévin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chevalement du n°1 bis de Liévin is where the day begins. 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.
Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Het Belfort of Halletoren.
On the Grote Markt of Kortrijk a tower stands alone in the middle of the square, as if the building it belonged to had wandered off. In a sense it did. The Belfort, or Halletoren, was once part of the cloth hall, the trading heart of a medieval textile town, and when the hall disappeared the tower stayed. It is one of the belfries of Belgium and France on the UNESCO list, and it has a pair of local celebrities at the top: two gilded figures, Manten and Kalle, who strike the hours on the bell. Kortrijk people are fond of them, and you will see their likenesses on all sorts of souvenirs.
Read the complete Het Belfort of Halletoren write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 136 km into the recorded legs you reach Het Belfort of Halletoren. 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.
back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle, late in the day. Next is Chevalement du n°1 bis de Liévin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement du n°1 bis de Liévin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Chevalement du n°1 bis de Liévin. That is the ride.
Chevalement du n°1 bis de Liévin → Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle → Het Belfort of Halletoren is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Het Belfort of Halletoren → back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle is 75 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle → Chevalement du n°1 bis de Liévin is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.