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.
A 321 km round trip from Sallaumines - roughly 5 h 35 in the saddle. It goes by way of Terril n°10, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la and Beffroi de Bergues. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Sallaumines is one of those towns that merges into its neighbours until you cannot tell where one stops, and the whole built-up band between Lens and Hénin-Beaumont is mining country. Cité Deblock is one of the company housing estates that went up in the twentieth century as the mines expanded, with brick houses in rows or pairs, gardens at the front and back, and a layout planned by engineers who believed good housing kept a workforce loyal. The UNESCO listing of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais mining basin in 2012 covers a number of such estates, because together they show how an entire society was built around coal.
Read the complete Cité Deblock write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Deblock is where the day begins. Next is Terril n°10.
In the western part of the Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin, around Bruay-la-Buissière, Divion and Marles-les-Mines, the horizon is shaped by terrils, the spoil heaps left by more than two centuries of coal mining. Terril number 10 is one of them, a dark cone of shale and waste rock that has slowly turned green as birch, broom and grasses have colonised it. The basin, with its pits, cités, railway lines and spoil heaps, was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape, recognising both the industrial history and the lives of the hundreds of thousands of miners who worked here.
Read the complete Terril n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril n°10 comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul.
Bailleul sits in French Flanders, so close to the Belgian border that you can hear Flemish place names on every signpost, and its town hall belfry, rising over the main square with a pointed spire and a carillon, looks every bit as Flemish as the towers of Ypres or Bruges. Like much of the town, it is a rebuilding: Bailleul was almost entirely destroyed in the spring of 1918, during the German offensive in Flanders, and was reconstructed in the 1920s in a neo-Flemish style of brick, stepped gables and decorative stonework. The belfry is one of the belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 78 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-.
Aire-sur-la-Lys is the kind of small French town that rewards a slow walk with no plan. Its belfry rises from the eighteenth-century town hall on the Grand Place, an elegant classical building topped by a tall tower with a lantern and a carillon, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France. Across the square stands the Bailliage, a richly decorated Renaissance building from around 1600, with arches, carved figures and a little loggia, which once housed the guard and the town's officials. A few streets away, the great collegiate church of Saint-Pierre, built in a flamboyant Gothic style, rises above the rooftops.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-, about halfway. Next is Beffroi de Bergues.
Bergues found a new kind of fame in 2008, when the comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, filmed here, became one of the most successful French films of all time, and suddenly the whole country wanted to see the town where a postman from the south is exiled to the cold north and ends up falling in love with it. The film's best-known scenes include the belfry, from which the hero rings the carillon, and the town still welcomes visitors who come in search of the locations. But Bergues was a proud place long before cinema arrived. It is a small fortified town in French Flanders, surrounded by ramparts and canals, with fortifications improved by Vauban in the seventeenth century.
Read the complete Beffroi de Bergues write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Bergues sits at 163 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- comes up about 213 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 243 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul. Next is back through Terril n°10.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril n°10, late in the day. Next is Cité Deblock.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Deblock write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 321 km.
Cité Deblock → Terril n°10 is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril n°10 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- → Beffroi de Bergues is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Bergues → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul → back through Terril n°10 is 46 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril n°10 → Cité Deblock is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.