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.
A 256 km round trip from Pecquencourt - roughly 4 h 25 in the saddle. It goes by way of Terrils Jumeaux 28, Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor and back through Terrils Jumeaux 28. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Rows of red-brick cottages, each with its garden, set along curving streets with trees: the Cité Barrois in Pecquencourt looks almost English, and that is no accident. In the later years of the coal era, the mining companies of northern France built garden cities for their workers, influenced by ideas from across the Channel about healthy housing and green space. This one is part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an entire landscape of pits, slag heaps, workers' housing, schools, churches and railways spread over more than a hundred kilometres.
Read the complete Cité Barrois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Barrois is where the day begins. Next is Terrils Jumeaux 28.
Two near-perfect black cones rise from the farmland between Ruitz, Maisnil-lès-Ruitz and Haillicourt, and once you have spotted them you will keep seeing them for miles. These twin terrils, the spoil heaps of former coal pits, are among the tallest in the Nord-Pas de Calais basin and have become something of a regional emblem. They look volcanic, which in a way they are: shale and waste rock tipped there for decades by the mining companies, slowly settling into steep, smooth pyramids that turn purple-grey in rain and almost silver in bright sun.
Read the complete Terrils Jumeaux 28 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terrils Jumeaux 28 comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor.
Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic stops under the Menin Gate in Ypres, and buglers from the local fire brigade sound the Last Post in memory of the soldiers of the British Empire who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War. The ceremony has been held almost every evening since 1928, interrupted only during the German occupation in the Second World War, and it draws crowds of all ages, many of them descendants of the fallen. The gate itself is inscribed with the names of more than fifty thousand soldiers whose bodies were never found. It is one of the sites included in the World Heritage inscription of the Funerary and Memory Sites of the First World War, inscribed in 2023.
Read the complete Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 128 km into the recorded legs you reach Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor. Next is back through Terrils Jumeaux 28.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terrils Jumeaux 28 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terrils Jumeaux 28, late in the day. Next is Cité Barrois.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Barrois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cité Barrois. That is the ride.
Cité Barrois → Terrils Jumeaux 28 is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terrils Jumeaux 28 → Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor → back through Terrils Jumeaux 28 is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Terrils Jumeaux 28 → Cité Barrois is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.