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.
68 km from Fouquières-lès-Lens to Fouquières-lès-Lens, about 1 h 10 of riding. The stops in between: Terril 140, Cités du Champ fleuri et du Garage and back through Terril 140. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Around Lens the slag heaps rise from the plain like a chain of black pyramids, and the twin cones at Loos-en-Gohelle, among the highest in Europe, are visible for miles. The Cité du Moulin sits in this landscape at Fouquières-lès-Lens, next to Harnes and Billy-Montigny, one of the pit villages built by the mining companies and now part of the UNESCO-listed mining basin. It is a quiet residential area today, but its streets tell the story of the coalfield's most terrible moment.
Read the complete Cité du Moulin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité du Moulin is where the day begins. Next is Terril 140.
Rising out of the flat fields north of Douai, the black, cone-shaped hill of Terril 140 is not a natural feature at all: it is a heap of mining waste, the spoil left over from decades of coal extraction. The mining basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a cultural landscape, is studded with hundreds of these terrils, some flat-topped, some pointed, and together with the pitheads, workers' housing and railways they tell the story of an industry that shaped the region for nearly three centuries.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 140 comes up about 17 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités du Champ fleuri et du Garage.
Coal made this corner of northern France, and coal left it with a landscape unlike anywhere else in the country: slag heaps rising like black pyramids from the fields, pithead frames standing over old shafts and long rows of brick miners' houses lining the streets of every town. The Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin was listed by UNESCO in 2012, and the Cités du Champ Fleuri et du Garage, near Masny and Lewarde, are among its typical housing estates, built by mining companies to house workers and their families close to the pits.
Read the complete Cités du Champ fleuri et du Garage write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 35 km into the recorded legs you reach Cités du Champ fleuri et du Garage. Next is back through Terril 140.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 140, late in the day. Next is Cité du Moulin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Moulin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cité du Moulin. That is the ride.
Cité du Moulin → Terril 140 is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 140 → Cités du Champ fleuri et du Garage is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités du Champ fleuri et du Garage → back through Terril 140 is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 140 → Cité du Moulin is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.