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 Bruay-sur-l'Escaut it runs 72 km to Bruay-sur-l'Escaut; allow about 1 h 22 of riding. The stops in between: Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle, Ensemble minier des Argales and back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle.
Brick terraced houses, small gardens and a straight street running toward the Escaut: at first glance the Cité du Rivage in Bruay-sur-l'Escaut looks like any working-class neighbourhood in northern France. It is part of something much larger. In 2012, UNESCO listed the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, a landscape of pit villages, headframes, slag heaps and railways stretching over a hundred kilometres, as a monument to three centuries of coal. This cité is one of its many fragments, an early housing development built by the mining companies to keep their workers close to the pits.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité du Rivage ancienne is where the day begins. Next is Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle.
Old and new: the label names two generations of company housing at Chabaud-Latour, and walking between them is a short lesson in how mining employers thought about their workers. The older cité is a grid of long brick rows, the corons of Zola's novels, packed close to the pit so that men could be at the shaft in minutes. The newer one, built later, spreads out in pairs and small groups of houses set in gardens, with wider streets and green space, part of a shift towards the garden-city ideal in the early twentieth century. Both belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site.
Read the complete Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle comes up about 17 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ensemble minier des Argales.
At Rieulay, in the middle of the Scarpe valley, the terril des Argales is one of the largest spoil heaps in France, a vast, flat-topped plateau of mining waste stretching for well over a kilometre. Once a stark, black wasteland, it has been transformed into a nature and leisure area, with a lake at its foot, trails, viewpoints and a nature reserve where rare plants and birds have found a home. The site, together with nearby mining remains, is part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Ensemble minier des Argales write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 33 km into the recorded legs you reach Ensemble minier des Argales. Next is back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle, late in the day. Next is Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cité du Rivage ancienne. That is the ride.
Cité du Rivage ancienne → Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle → Ensemble minier des Argales is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ensemble minier des Argales → back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cités Chabaud-Latour ancienne et nouvelle → Cité du Rivage ancienne is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.