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.
From La Bassée it runs 299 km to La Bassée; allow about 5 h 09 of riding. It goes by way of Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras, Cités de Guesnain, Château Dampierre 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.
Rows of identical brick houses with small gardens, laid out in straight lines or gentle curves, each with its own vegetable plot and outhouse: the cité at Auchy-les-Mines is a textbook example of the miners' housing built by mining companies in northern France. The companies provided homes, schools, churches and shops, both to attract workers and to control them, and the cités, with their distinctive layouts and architecture, are a central part of the World Heritage listing of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Read the complete Cité d’Auchy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité d’Auchy is where the day begins. 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.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités de Guesnain.
A kilometre down the road from the workers' housing of Guesnain stands the best place in France to understand what coal really meant. The Centre Historique Minier at Lewarde occupies the old Delloye pit, which closed in 1971, and it walks you through the whole life of a mine: the lamp room, the showers where miners hung their clothes on chains up to the ceiling, the stables for the pit ponies, and a reconstructed gallery underground where you hear the noise of the picks and the creak of the props. Come here first, and every terrace and terril you pass afterwards will make more sense.
Read the complete Cités de Guesnain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 71 km into the recorded legs you reach Cités de Guesnain. Next is Château Dampierre.
Anzin, on the northern edge of Valenciennes, is where coal mining in northern France began on an industrial scale. In the eighteenth century, the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin became one of the largest companies in France, and its mines, workers' housing, slag heaps and buildings shaped the landscape of the region. Château Dampierre is one of the buildings linked to that history, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, inscribed in 2012, which preserves more than a hundred sites across a vast area: pits, headframes, miners' cités, churches, schools and the great black spoil heaps known as terrils. The big miners' strike at Anzin in 1884 helped inspire Émile Zola's novel Germinal.
Read the complete Château Dampierre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château Dampierre, 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 150 km, about halfway. Next is back through Château Dampierre.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Château Dampierre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Château Dampierre comes up about 193 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cités de Guesnain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités de Guesnain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 227 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cités de Guesnain. 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, late in the day. Next is Cité d’Auchy.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité d’Auchy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 299 km.
Cité d’Auchy → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Cités de Guesnain is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de Guesnain → Château Dampierre is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château Dampierre → Beffroi de Mons is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Mons → back through Château Dampierre is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Château Dampierre → back through Cités de Guesnain is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cités de Guesnain → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Cité d’Auchy is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.