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.
272 km from Liévin to Liévin, about 4 h 41 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. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
A headframe is the most honest piece of architecture in a mining country, because it exists only to hold up a wheel. The chevalement of Pit 3 bis at Lens is one of those tall, simple frames of concrete or steel, once used to raise coal and men from hundreds of metres underground, and it is now one of the markers of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a living cultural landscape. At the height of the industry, hundreds of such frames stood on this flat country, and the sky was filled with smoke and steam.
Read the complete Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens 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°3 bis de Lens.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens. That is the ride.
Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens → 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°3 bis de Lens is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.