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.
A 254 km round trip from Liévin - roughly 4 h 23 in the saddle. On the way it passes Beffroi de Tournai, Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes and back through Beffroi de Tournai. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
There is a particular kind of street in the old coalfield that outsiders mistake for suburban normality. Rows of identical brick houses, each with a small front garden, line a gently curving road, with a school at one end and a church at the other. These are the cités, built by the mining companies to house their workers, and the Cité des Petits Bois at Liévin is one of them. It belongs to the same family as the cités of the Solitude, named on this ride, and together they tell how a company could organise the life of its men from cradle to pit head.
Read the complete Cité des Petits Bois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité des Petits Bois is where the day begins. 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.
Beffroi de Tournai comes up about 64 km into the recorded legs. Next is Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes.
Beneath the fields south-east of Mons lies a honeycomb of shafts and galleries dug by Neolithic farmers more than six thousand years ago. They were after flint, the essential raw material for axes and tools, and they dug shafts up to fifteen metres deep through the chalk to reach the best seams, using antler picks and stone hammers. The mines at Spiennes, covering more than a hundred hectares, are the largest and earliest in north-western Europe, and they were inscribed by UNESCO in 2000. An interpretation centre allows visitors to descend into one of the shafts, and on the surface the ground is still scattered with flint flakes.
Read the complete Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 127 km into the recorded legs you reach Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes. 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.
back through Beffroi de Tournai, late in the day. Next is Cité des Petits Bois.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité des Petits Bois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cité des Petits Bois. That is the ride.
Cité des Petits Bois → Beffroi de Tournai is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Tournai → Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes → back through Beffroi de Tournai is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de Tournai → Cité des Petits Bois is 64 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.