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.
174 km from Sin-le-Noble to Sin-le-Noble, about 2 h 43 of riding. It goes by way of Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt, Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi, Terril 14 and back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi. The line favours views over speed.
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 Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt.
Libercourt is a young town by French standards. It grew in the early twentieth century around a coal company's pits and a railway line, on land that had been farm and marsh, and the planners laid it out from scratch, with straight streets, a station and cités of brick cottages in tidy rows. Many of the miners who filled them came from Poland, recruited in large numbers between the wars, and Polish names, church services and recipes marked the mining villages of the north for generations.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi.
Take any road across the Artois plain around Grenay and you will see the shape of the mining basin on the skyline: conical slag heaps, called terrils, rising out of the farmland and cités, and tall brick pit-head buildings that once housed the winding gear. This area lies between Lens and Béthune, in a district called the Gohelle, and it was mined intensively from the nineteenth century until the last pit closed in 1990. The Grenay and Mazingarbe sites are part of the UNESCO-listed mining basin, which recognises both the buildings and the landscape, and the way company housing, railways and spoil heaps shaped one another.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 59 km into the recorded legs you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi. 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.
Terril 14, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi sits at 100 km, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt comes up about 145 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Cités de Guesnain closes the day.
Cités de Guesnain → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi → Terril 14 is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 14 → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt → Cités de Guesnain is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.