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.
163 km from Somain to Somain, about 2 h 33 of riding. It goes by way of Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos, Cité d’Auchy and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Somain exists because of the railway. Several lines meet here, and the town grew up around the station, which still has the busy feel of a junction. The Cités de Beaurepaire were built by the Aniche mining company, one of the great concerns of the northern coalfield, and they show how a company could shape a landscape: neat brick rows, small squares, a few shared buildings, and gardens laid out to a plan. A local will tell you who lived in which house and which families still do; an outsider notices the symmetry first, and then the small signs of individuality, a painted door, a trellis, a satellite dish pointing the wrong way.
Read the complete Cités de Beaurepaire write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de Beaurepaire is where the day begins. Next is Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault.
The flat country between Douai and Lens does not look like much from a motorway, but it holds one of the great industrial landscapes of Europe. For more than two centuries coal was dug from under these fields, and the mining basin of the Nord-Pas de Calais was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape of pits, slag heaps, railway lines and workers' housing. The Fosse Cornuault at Évin-Malmaison is one piece of that vast mosaic, a former colliery site with its associated buildings, set among the brick villages of the eastern part of the basin.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault comes up about 23 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos.
Loos is a town on the southwestern edge of Lille, and its town hall belfry is part of the same UNESCO family as the medieval towers of Bruges and Ghent, though it is a much more modern member. In this corner of Europe a belfry was the symbol of a town's independence from lord and church, and when the industrial towns of the Nord built new town halls in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they gave them belfries too, as a statement that they had grown up. Loos's tower, in brick and stone, does exactly that.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 58 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos. Next is Cité d’Auchy.
Rows of identical brick houses with small gardens, laid out in straight lines or gentle curves, each with its own vegetable plot and outhouse: the cité at Auchy-les-Mines is a textbook example of the miners' housing built by mining companies in northern France. The companies provided homes, schools, churches and shops, both to attract workers and to control them, and the cités, with their distinctive layouts and architecture, are a central part of the World Heritage listing of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Read the complete Cité d’Auchy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité d’Auchy, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos sits at 104 km, about halfway. Next is back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault comes up about 139 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités de Beaurepaire.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités de Beaurepaire write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de Beaurepaire closes the day.
Cités de Beaurepaire → Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos → Cité d’Auchy is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité d’Auchy → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos → back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault → Cités de Beaurepaire is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.