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.
A 255 km round trip from Bruay-la-Buissière - roughly 4 h 24 in the saddle. It goes by way of Cités de Guesnain, Major Mining Sites of Wallonia and back through Cités de Guesnain. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Bruay-la-Buissière is a town built on coal, and the rows of brick houses that spread around it were designed to keep miners close to their pits. The Cités Anatole France and des Électriciens belong to the great mining landscape of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, a basin of coalfields, slag heaps and company towns that UNESCO inscribed in 2012. Coal was mined here from the early eighteenth century until the last pit closed in 1990, and the memory of that work is still everywhere.
Read the complete Cités Anatole France et des Electriciens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités Anatole France et des Electriciens is where the day begins. Next is Cités de Guesnain.
A kilometre down the road from the workers' housing of Guesnain stands the best place in France to understand what coal really meant. The Centre Historique Minier at Lewarde occupies the old Delloye pit, which closed in 1971, and it walks you through the whole life of a mine: the lamp room, the showers where miners hung their clothes on chains up to the ceiling, the stables for the pit ponies, and a reconstructed gallery underground where you hear the noise of the picks and the creak of the props. Come here first, and every terrace and terril you pass afterwards will make more sense.
Read the complete Cités de Guesnain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de Guesnain comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Major Mining Sites of Wallonia.
Grand-Hornu, on the edge of the Borinage coalfield west of Mons, looks less like a coal mine than a neoclassical palace. In the early nineteenth century the industrialist Henri De Gorge built it as a model colliery, with workshops, offices and stables arranged around a vast oval courtyard of brick arches, and hundreds of houses for workers, each with its own garden, laid out in streets around it. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, combining industry and housing in one planned complex. Mining ended in the mid-twentieth century, and after years of neglect the site was restored. Today it houses a museum of contemporary art and a design centre, and it is one of the four Major Mining Sites of Wallonia listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Major Mining Sites of Wallonia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 128 km into the recorded legs you reach Major Mining Sites of Wallonia. Next is back through Cités de Guesnain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités de Guesnain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cités de Guesnain, late in the day. Next is Cités Anatole France et des Electriciens.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités Anatole France et des Electriciens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cités Anatole France et des Electriciens. That is the ride.
Cités Anatole France et des Electriciens → Cités de Guesnain is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de Guesnain → Major Mining Sites of Wallonia is 67 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Major Mining Sites of Wallonia → back through Cités de Guesnain is 67 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Cités de Guesnain → Cités Anatole France et des Electriciens is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.