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.
295 km from Noyelles-Godault to Noyelles-Godault, about 5 h 05 of riding. It goes by way of Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, Beffroi de Tournai, Cité du Rivage ancienne and Beffroi de Mons. 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.
Cité Crombez is a miners' settlement at Noyelles-Godault, on the eastern edge of Hénin-Beaumont, in the heart of the old coal basin between Lens and Douai. Built by the mining company to house its workers, it has the classic layout of brick houses, gardens and straight streets, and it is part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site. Today it is a quiet residential area, surrounded by shopping centres, motorways and the remains of heavy industry.
Read the complete Cité Crombez write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Crombez is where the day begins. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Escaudain sits in the old heartland of the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin, the oldest and once the most powerful of the coal companies in northern France, and the landscape around it is pure mining country: rows of brick terraces, spoil heaps, old railway embankments and the occasional headframe standing like a monument. This is the Valenciennes end of the coalfield, close to the Belgian border, and it was here that coal mining in the north began in the eighteenth century. The town and its surroundings form one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, which UNESCO inscribed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de Tournai.
Tournai is one of the oldest towns in Belgium, and it does not shout about it. Sitting on the Scheldt, which the French-speaking locals call the Escaut, it was a Roman settlement, then the first capital of the Franks: Childeric I, father of Clovis, was buried here, and when his tomb was found in 1653 it yielded gold, jewels and hundreds of golden bees that later inspired Napoleon's imperial emblem. The belfry on the Grand-Place was begun in the late twelfth century and is considered the oldest in the country. Climb its two hundred and fifty-odd steps and you look down on a town of grey stone and slate, and straight across at the five towers of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, a Romanesque and Gothic giant listed by UNESCO in its own right.
Read the complete Beffroi de Tournai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 74 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de Tournai. Next is Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Brick terraced houses, small gardens and a straight street running toward the Escaut: at first glance the Cité du Rivage in Bruay-sur-l'Escaut looks like any working-class neighbourhood in northern France. It is part of something much larger. In 2012, UNESCO listed the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, a landscape of pit villages, headframes, slag heaps and railways stretching over a hundred kilometres, as a monument to three centuries of coal. This cité is one of its many fragments, an early housing development built by the mining companies to keep their workers close to the pits.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité du Rivage ancienne, about halfway. Next is Beffroi de Mons.
Belgium has many belfries, but only one in the baroque style, and it rises above Mons on the hill where the medieval castle stood. Built in the seventeenth century, it is about eighty-seven metres tall, with a carillon of forty-nine bells, and it was listed by UNESCO with the other belfries of Belgium and France. A lift takes visitors to the top, where the view stretches across the Borinage, the old coal-mining country around the city, and over the rooftops of the old town. Inside, an interpretation centre tells the story of the tower.
Read the complete Beffroi de Mons write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Mons sits at 148 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité du Rivage ancienne comes up about 186 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Beffroi de Tournai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de Tournai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 220 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Beffroi de Tournai. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, late in the day. Next is Cité Crombez.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Crombez write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 295 km.
Cité Crombez → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → Beffroi de Tournai is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Tournai → Cité du Rivage ancienne is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité du Rivage ancienne → Beffroi de Mons is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Mons → back through Cité du Rivage ancienne is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité du Rivage ancienne → back through Beffroi de Tournai is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de Tournai → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → Cité Crombez is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.