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.
162 km from Courrières to Courrières, about 3 h 03 of riding. It goes by way of Fosse n°2 de Flines, Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are, Château de l’Hermitage and back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules.
The mining basin of northern France is a flat, open country that seems to have been built entirely by hand, and among the first things you notice are the hills that nature never put there. They are the terrils, the slag heaps of the coal mines, some of them more than a hundred metres high, and around Courrières they punctuate the horizon between rows of brick houses. The Cité Saint-Paul belongs to this world: a miners' housing estate, laid out by the mining company with its rows of uniform houses, gardens, schools and a church, so that a worker could live, shop and pray within the company's reach.
Read the complete Cité Saint-Paul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Saint-Paul is where the day begins. Next is Fosse n°2 de Flines.
The headframe is the giveaway. In the low, watery country between Lallaing, Anhiers and Flines-lez-Raches, the steel or concrete winding towers of old coal pits still stand as markers, and Fosse n°2 de Flines is one of the sites that recall the industry that shaped this corner of the Douai area. A fosse in the local vocabulary is a pit with its shafts, buildings and spoil heap, and around each one a small world grew: rows of brick housing, a church, a school, and the company offices that ran the lives of everyone underground and above it.
Read the complete Fosse n°2 de Flines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse n°2 de Flines comes up about 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are.
Anyone who follows cycling knows the Trouée d'Arenberg, the arrow-straight cobbled lane through the forest near Wallers where Paris-Roubaix often breaks apart. What fewer know is that the lane passes the gate of a colliery, and that the colliery is one of the jewels of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site. Fosse Arenberg, with its three steel headframes and brick engine houses, closed in 1989, and a few years later Claude Berri filmed his version of Zola's Germinal here, using the pithead and the cités around it as a ready-made nineteenth-century mining town.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 57 km into the recorded legs you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are. Next is Château de l’Hermitage.
On the Franco-Belgian border, in a forest that has never much cared which country it is in, a pale classical château stands in a clearing. The Château de l'Hermitage was built in the eighteenth century for the dukes of Croÿ, one of the great aristocratic families of the region, as a refined country retreat, and it sits just inside France, near Condé-sur-l'Escaut, at the edge of the forest of Bon-Secours. The family's title went back centuries, and their estates spread across both sides of what is now the border.
Read the complete Château de l’Hermitage write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château de l’Hermitage, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are sits at 99 km, about halfway. Next is back through Fosse n°2 de Flines.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fosse n°2 de Flines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fosse n°2 de Flines comes up about 136 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité Saint-Paul.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Saint-Paul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Saint-Paul closes the day.
Cité Saint-Paul → Fosse n°2 de Flines is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fosse n°2 de Flines → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are → Château de l’Hermitage is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château de l’Hermitage → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are → back through Fosse n°2 de Flines is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fosse n°2 de Flines → Cité Saint-Paul is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.