CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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 Wingles it runs 231 km to Wingles; allow about 4 h 15 of riding. The stops in between: Beffroi de porte de Lucheux, Beffroi de Rue and back through Beffroi de porte de Lucheux. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Wingles is a small town of nearly nine thousand people on the southern edge of the Lens coalfield, and its Cité de la Gare takes its name from the railway station that once carried coal away. This is the logistics of the mining basin laid bare: pit, rail, canal and village. The coal came up the shafts, was hauled to the sorting plants and loaded on trains that ran to the factories of the north and the ports of the Channel, while the people who dug it lived in neat brick rows within sight of the headframes.
Read the complete Cité de la Gare write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité de la Gare is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de porte de Lucheux.
Lucheux is a small village in a wooded valley in the north of the Somme, close to the border with the Pas-de-Calais, and its belfry is something of an oddity. Rather than rising above a town hall or a market square, as in the larger towns of Flanders and Picardy, it is built into a fortified gateway, a stout stone tower straddling the road through the village. It is part of the group of belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO, a symbol of the civic freedoms that towns and villages won from their feudal lords in the Middle Ages. Above the village stand the ruins of a castle that belonged to the Counts of Saint-Pol, with a great hall and towers in a romantic state of decay.
Read the complete Beffroi de porte de Lucheux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de porte de Lucheux comes up 67 km in. Next is Beffroi de Rue.
Rue is a small town of three thousand people that used to be a seaport, and the belfry in the middle of it is one of the reasons it still feels more important than its size suggests. Over centuries the Baie de Somme silted up and the sea pulled back, leaving Rue stranded a few kilometres inland among salt meadows and polders, but the stone tower that once watched the harbour still stands over the square. It is part of the group of belfries of Belgium and northern France on the UNESCO list, symbols of civic freedom built by towns that wanted the world to know they governed themselves.
Read the complete Beffroi de Rue write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
134 km in you reach Beffroi de Rue. Next is back through Beffroi de porte de Lucheux.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de porte de Lucheux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de porte de Lucheux, late in the day. Next is Cité de la Gare.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité de la Gare write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cité de la Gare. That is the ride.
Cité de la Gare → Beffroi de porte de Lucheux is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de porte de Lucheux → Beffroi de Rue is 72 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Beffroi de Rue → back through Beffroi de porte de Lucheux is 72 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Beffroi de porte de Lucheux → Cité de la Gare is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.