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.
From Mazingarbe it runs 244 km to Mazingarbe; allow about 4 h 12 of riding. The stops in between: Belfort met Lakenhal, Béguinage de Bruges and back through Belfort met Lakenhal. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
This part of the ride is 61 km of Cité n°2 → Belfort met Lakenhal.
Mazingarbe is a small town on the northern edge of the mining basin, with the terraced rows of a miners' cité running down streets of red brick, and nearly twelve thousand people live in neighbouring Bully-les-Mines. The Cité Foch and the Cité Bellevue are two of the estates that mark this stretch of the basin on the map. The cité, built by the coal company for its workers, usually came with a school, a church, a company shop and a community hall, so that the pit shaped a whole life.
Read the complete Cité n°2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité n°2 is where the day begins. Next is Belfort met Lakenhal.
Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic stops under the Menin Gate in Ieper and buglers of the local fire brigade play the Last Post for the soldiers of the British Empire who died in the Ypres Salient and have no known grave. The ceremony has been held almost every evening since 1928, interrupted only during the German occupation in the Second World War. Walk from the gate to the Grote Markt and you come to the Cloth Hall and its belfry, a huge Gothic building that dominated medieval Flanders, when Ypres was one of the great cloth towns of Europe.
Read the complete Belfort met Lakenhal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Belfort met Lakenhal comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Béguinage de Bruges.
The Princely Beguinage of Bruges, Ten Wijngaerde, is the sort of place that makes people lower their voices without being asked. White-washed houses surround a grassy courtyard planted with old trees, and in spring thousands of daffodils bloom under them. A beguinage was a community where lay women lived a religious life without taking full vows, and Flanders had many of them from the thirteenth century. This one was founded around 1245 under Margaret of Constantinople, Countess of Flanders, and the UNESCO listing of Flemish Beguinages covers it, along with Diest and others.
Read the complete Béguinage de Bruges write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 122 km into the recorded legs you reach Béguinage de Bruges. Next is back through Belfort met Lakenhal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Belfort met Lakenhal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Belfort met Lakenhal, late in the day. Next is Cité n°2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité n°2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cité n°2. That is the ride.
Cité n°2 → Belfort met Lakenhal is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Belfort met Lakenhal → Béguinage de Bruges is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Béguinage de Bruges → back through Belfort met Lakenhal is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Belfort met Lakenhal → Cité n°2 is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.