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.
A 256 km round trip from Sin-le-Noble - roughly 4 h 01 in the saddle. On the way it passes Monument Emile Basly, Terril 14, Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de and Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Monument Emile Basly.
Émile Basly was a miner who became a union leader, a deputy and for a long time the mayor of Lens, and his monument stands in the town as a salute to the people who worked underground. He led the great strike of 1884 at Anzin, which inspired Zola's Germinal, and later rose to national politics as a socialist. In Lens, a town of over thirty-eight thousand people at the heart of the Pas-de-Calais coalfield, he remains a local hero. The town was razed in the First World War and rebuilt in the 1920s, so much of the centre has the brick-and-concrete look of that rebuilding.
Read the complete Monument Emile Basly write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument Emile Basly comes up about 32 km into the recorded legs. Next is Terril 14.
Auchel lies on the western rim of the coalfield, where the black seams run out against the chalk hills of the Artois, and Terril 14 rises above the town and its neighbour Marles-les-Mines as a long, dark ridge softened by birch and grass. The heap is built of shale and waste rock brought up from the pits of the old company that worked this corner of the basin, and like many of the terrils, it has been left to nature since mining ended. Its slopes are now home to plants that love warm, dry ground, and the summit offers a view over the rooftops of the mining towns toward the green hills to the west. It belongs to the vast mining landscape listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Terril 14 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 64 km into the recorded legs you reach Terril 14. Next is Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de.
Every mining company in the north of France needed an office, and the one that held the pay books, maps and plans of the Lens pits needed a large one. The Grands Bureaux of the Société des Mines de Lens stand in the middle of the town as a monument to an organisation that employed tens of thousands of men and controlled whole districts: the housing, the schools, the shops, the churches and the clinics were all in the company's gift. The building was part of the reconstruction after the First World War, when the town had been reduced to rubble and the company set about rebuilding its pits and its headquarters in brick and stone.
Read the complete Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de, about halfway. Next is Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait.
Mining companies in northern France did more than dig coal. They built housing, schools, churches, shops and clinics, so that workers' lives were shaped from birth to burial by the company, and the Goutte de Lait, the Drop of Milk, is a piece of that system. The name refers to the charitable clinics set up across France from the late nineteenth century to give mothers advice and clean milk for their babies, in an age when infant mortality was terrifying. In Auchel, the building belonged to the mining community, and it is listed as part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Read the complete Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait sits at 138 km, about halfway. Next is back through Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de comes up about 161 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Terril 14.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 14 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 194 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Terril 14. Next is back through Monument Emile Basly.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monument Emile Basly write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Monument Emile Basly, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 256 km.
Cités de Guesnain → Monument Emile Basly is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Monument Emile Basly → Terril 14 is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 14 → Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de → Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bâtiment de la Goutte de Lait → back through Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Grands Bureaux de la Société des Mines de → back through Terril 14 is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 14 → back through Monument Emile Basly is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Monument Emile Basly → Cités de Guesnain is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.