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 164 km to Dourges; allow about 2 h 31 of riding. The stops in between: Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras, Paysage et ensemble miniers de Barlin and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. The line favours views over speed.
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 Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel.
A dispensary may seem an odd thing to visit, but this is a monument to something remarkable. In the nineteenth century the coal companies of northern France built housing, schools, churches and clinics for their workers, partly out of paternalism and partly to keep a stable workforce, and the miners themselves set up mutual aid societies, the sociétés de secours mutuel, to pay for doctors, medicines and funerals. The dispensary at Bully-les-Mines belongs to that world of care and control, and it is one of the buildings that explain why UNESCO listed the whole mining basin in 2012. The brick architecture has a plain, solid dignity, and the sense of a community looking after its own is easy to feel.
Read the complete Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Arras has two great squares, the Grand-Place and the Place des Héros, surrounded by tall Flemish-baroque houses with curved gables and arcades, and towering above them is the belfry of the town hall, over seventy metres high. It looks medieval, but most of it is a careful reconstruction: Arras was devastated by German artillery during the First World War, when the front line ran just east of the town for years, and the belfry was destroyed in 1914. After the war, the people of Arras rebuilt it, along with the squares, and today it is one of the belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 51 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Barlin.
Barlin is where the coalfield starts to run into hills. To the west, the land rises gently into the Artois uplands, and the mining town sits at the transition, its slag heaps, workers' houses and pit buildings now part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site. It is a quieter corner than Lens or Douai, and the mix of industrial history and rolling countryside makes it a pleasant place to pause.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Barlin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Barlin, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras sits at 103 km, about halfway. Next is back through Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel comes up about 139 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Cité Bruno closes the day.
Cité Bruno → Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Barlin is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Barlin → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → back through Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel → Cité Bruno is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.