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 Auchel it runs 151 km to Auchel; allow about 2 h 22 of riding. The stops in between: Cité n°10, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras, Terrils 87 et 92 and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
West of Béthune, the coalfield starts to run out of flat land. The first chalk hills of Artois rise around Auchel and Cauchy-à-la-Tour, and the pit villages climb their slopes in neat rows of brick. The Cité de Rimbert is one of these, built by the mining company of Marles to house its workers, and it belongs to the long necklace of sites in the UNESCO-listed mining basin. Its houses, gardens and straight streets are a textbook example of company planning, with every family given a home, a vegetable plot and a short walk to the pit.
Read the complete Cité de Rimbert write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité de Rimbert is where the day begins. Next is Cité n°10.
Sains-en-Gohelle is a former coal town in the heart of the Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin, and Cité n°10 is one of its old mining estates, rows of brick houses built for miners and their families around a pithead. The basin, which stretches about 120 kilometres from the Belgian border towards the west, was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, and the cités, the slag heaps and the headframes are its most visible remains.
Read the complete Cité n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité n°10 comes up about 25 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 49 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. Next is Terrils 87 et 92.
From a distance they look like hills, which in this flat country is reason enough to stare. The terrils numbered 87 and 92, on the edge of Noyelles-Godault and Dourges next to Hénin-Beaumont, are spoil heaps from the coal mines of the Nord-Pas de Calais basin, made of the shale and rock that came up with the coal over a century and more of mining. They are part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2012 as a whole cultural landscape: pits, headframes, miners' housing, schools, churches and these artificial black mountains, more than a hundred of which are protected.
Read the complete Terrils 87 et 92 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terrils 87 et 92, 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 Cité n°10.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité n°10 comes up about 129 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité de Rimbert.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité de Rimbert write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité de Rimbert closes the day.
Cité de Rimbert → Cité n°10 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité n°10 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Terrils 87 et 92 is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terrils 87 et 92 → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 28 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 Cité n°10 is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité n°10 → Cité de Rimbert is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.