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 164 km round trip from Barlin - roughly 2 h 34 in the saddle. The stops in between: Cité du Pont, Chevalement de la fosse n°9, Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain and back through Chevalement de la fosse n°9. The line favours views over speed.
At the western edge of the coalfield, where the plain of the mining basin starts to buckle into the chalk hills of Artois, the town of Barlin grew up around its pits. The Cité des Soeurs is one of its housing estates, rows of brick miners' houses with gardens, and Terril 244, a slag heap now furred with trees, stands nearby like a man-made hill. Both belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site, which covers more than a hundred kilometres of coal country from the Belgian border westwards.
Read the complete Cité des Soeurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité des Soeurs is where the day begins. Next is Cité du Pont.
Wingles sits on the northern edge of the coal basin, between Lens and La Bassée, where the mining towns give way to the canals and fields of the Weppes and the outskirts of Lille. The Cité du Pont is one of its miners' settlements, rows of brick houses built for the workers of the local pits, and it is part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site. The name, the bridge settlement, hints at the importance of the waterways that crisscross this flat land.
Read the complete Cité du Pont write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité du Pont comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chevalement de la fosse n°9.
The tall steel frame that stands over a coal pit shaft is called a chevalement in French, and a headframe in English, and in the old mining basin of northern France they are the cathedrals of a vanished industry. This one stands at the Fosse n°9, a few kilometres north of Douai, in the plain of the Pévèle, where coal was dug for more than two centuries. The basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais stretches for over a hundred kilometres across flat farmland, and its pits, slag heaps, workers' villages and railway lines are now protected by UNESCO, listed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape. The last pit closed in 1990, and the people here still talk about the mine in the present tense.
Read the complete Chevalement de la fosse n°9 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 57 km into the recorded legs you reach Chevalement de la fosse n°9. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Escaudain sits in the old heartland of the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin, the oldest and once the most powerful of the coal companies in northern France, and the landscape around it is pure mining country: rows of brick terraces, spoil heaps, old railway embankments and the occasional headframe standing like a monument. This is the Valenciennes end of the coalfield, close to the Belgian border, and it was here that coal mining in the north began in the eighteenth century. The town and its surroundings form one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, which UNESCO inscribed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, about halfway. Next is back through Chevalement de la fosse n°9.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement de la fosse n°9 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chevalement de la fosse n°9 sits at 101 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cité du Pont.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Pont write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité du Pont comes up about 140 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité des Soeurs.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité des Soeurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité des Soeurs closes the day.
Cité des Soeurs → Cité du Pont is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité du Pont → Chevalement de la fosse n°9 is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chevalement de la fosse n°9 → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → back through Chevalement de la fosse n°9 is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chevalement de la fosse n°9 → back through Cité du Pont is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité du Pont → Cité des Soeurs is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.