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 174 km round trip from Lens - roughly 2 h 47 in the saddle. The stops in between: Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai, Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm and back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The mining basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais is flat country made hilly by hand. Around Lens, the heaps of slag left by two centuries of coal digging rise like black pyramids above the fields, and the red-brick miners' houses stand in long, tidy terraces, row after row, called corons. This particular stop lies in the town of Lens, in a cité, the name for a company-built miners' estate, and the numbers in the label come from the way the mining companies numbered their pits and estates.
Read the complete Cité n°2 62 Pas-de-Calais write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité n°2 62 Pas-de-Calais is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai.
The belfry of Douai rises above the town hall like a stone exclamation mark, a tall, square tower with a corner turret and a gilded lion at the top. Belfries were the symbols of medieval towns in Flanders and northern France, built to show that a town had won its freedoms, and to hold the bell that called citizens to meet, fight or put out fires. Douai's was begun in the fourteenth century and finished in the fifteenth, and it is one of the group of belfries of Belgium and France that UNESCO lists together.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 52 km into the recorded legs you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain. Next is Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm.
In 1757, a group of aristocrats and entrepreneurs founded the Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin to work the coal seams found under the plains near Valenciennes. It grew into one of the largest industrial companies in France, owning dozens of pits, thousands of workers' houses and its own schools, churches and shops. The ensemble here at Fresnes-sur-Escaut, close to the Belgian border, includes buildings connected with the company's long history, and it is part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site.
Read the complete Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain sits at 101 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai comes up about 152 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité n°2 62 Pas-de-Calais.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité n°2 62 Pas-de-Calais write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité n°2 62 Pas-de-Calais closes the day.
Cité n°2 62 Pas-de-Calais → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Compagnie des Mines d’Anzin: Ensemble comm → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai → Cité n°2 62 Pas-de-Calais is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.