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.
255 km from Courrières to Courrières, about 4 h 24 of riding. On the way it passes Cité du Rivage ancienne, Stadhuis met Belfort and back through Cité du Rivage ancienne. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
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 Cité du Rivage ancienne.
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 comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Stadhuis met Belfort.
Oudenaarde's town hall looks like something carved from lace. Built in the early sixteenth century in the late Gothic style, it has a facade covered with pointed arches, niches and statues, and a slender belfry topped with a gilded crown on which stands a small knight known locally as Hanske de Krijger, Little John the Warrior. The building is one of the finest of its kind in Flanders, and it is listed by UNESCO among the belfries of Belgium and France. Inside, there are displays of the tapestries for which Oudenaarde was famous across Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially its verdures, woven scenes of forests and greenery.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 128 km into the recorded legs you reach Stadhuis met Belfort. Next is back through 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 through Cité du Rivage ancienne, late in the day. 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.
Back at Cité Saint-Paul. That is the ride.
Cité Saint-Paul → Cité du Rivage ancienne is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité du Rivage ancienne → Stadhuis met Belfort is 67 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Stadhuis met Belfort → back through Cité du Rivage ancienne is 67 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Cité du Rivage ancienne → Cité Saint-Paul is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.