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.
From Dourges it runs 335 km to Dourges; allow about 5 h 06 of riding. On the way it passes Cité des Soeurs, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la, Beffroi de Bergues and Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Calais. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Dourges sits between Lens and Douai, in the very middle of the old coal basin, and the Cité Bruno is one of the rows of brick homes the mining company put up for its workers. What stays with you is the quiet. A district that once lay under smoke now has pigeons on the roofs, bicycles against the walls and hedges clipped square, and the street plan, with its straight lines and identical frontages, makes it feel like a stage set for a very ordinary life. Château Dampierre, the name that goes with this stop, is a reminder that the land around here also belonged to owners and gentry long before the pits, so there is a country-house layer under the industrial one.
Read the complete Cité Bruno write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Bruno is where the day begins. Next is Cité des Soeurs.
At the western edge of the coalfield, where the plain of the mining basin starts to buckle into the chalk hills of Artois, the town of Barlin grew up around its pits. The Cité des Soeurs is one of its housing estates, rows of brick miners' houses with gardens, and Terril 244, a slag heap now furred with trees, stands nearby like a man-made hill. Both belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site, which covers more than a hundred kilometres of coal country from the Belgian border westwards.
Read the complete Cité des Soeurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité des Soeurs comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-.
Aire-sur-la-Lys is the kind of small French town that rewards a slow walk with no plan. Its belfry rises from the eighteenth-century town hall on the Grand Place, an elegant classical building topped by a tall tower with a lantern and a carillon, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France. Across the square stands the Bailliage, a richly decorated Renaissance building from around 1600, with arches, carved figures and a little loggia, which once housed the guard and the town's officials. A few streets away, the great collegiate church of Saint-Pierre, built in a flamboyant Gothic style, rises above the rooftops.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-. Next is Beffroi de Bergues.
Bergues found a new kind of fame in 2008, when the comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, filmed here, became one of the most successful French films of all time, and suddenly the whole country wanted to see the town where a postman from the south is exiled to the cold north and ends up falling in love with it. The film's best-known scenes include the belfry, from which the hero rings the carillon, and the town still welcomes visitors who come in search of the locations. But Bergues was a proud place long before cinema arrived. It is a small fortified town in French Flanders, surrounded by ramparts and canals, with fortifications improved by Vauban in the seventeenth century.
Read the complete Beffroi de Bergues write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Bergues, about halfway. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Calais.
Most riders know Calais as the place where the ferry or the tunnel train spits them out onto French tarmac, and they head south without a backward glance. Spare it an hour. The town hall is a surprise, a grand building in Flemish Renaissance style finished in the early twentieth century, and its belfry, one of the tallest in the region, rises well above the rooftops as a landmark you can see from the port. It forms part of the UNESCO list of belfries in Belgium and France, alongside towers that are centuries older.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Calais write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Calais sits at 175 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de Bergues.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de Bergues write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de Bergues comes up about 217 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 268 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-. Next is back through Cité des Soeurs.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité des Soeurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité des Soeurs, late in the day. Next is Cité Bruno.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Bruno write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 335 km.
Cité Bruno → Cité des Soeurs is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité des Soeurs → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- → Beffroi de Bergues is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Bergues → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Calais is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Calais → back through Beffroi de Bergues is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de Bergues → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- → back through Cité des Soeurs is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité des Soeurs → Cité Bruno is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.