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.
From Waziers it runs 250 km to Waziers; allow about 4 h 19 of riding. The stops in between: Chevalement du Vieux-Deux, Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor and back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
On the edge of Waziers, near Douai, the cités de la Solitude are rows of brick houses built by a mining company for its workers, laid out in neat streets with small gardens. Such company towns, the cités minières, were the backbone of life in the coal basin of northern France, providing housing, schools, churches and shops for miners and their families, and they are among the most important elements of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012. The name Solitude seems almost ironic for a place built to house so many people close together.
Read the complete Cités de la Solitude write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de la Solitude is where the day begins. Next is Chevalement du Vieux-Deux.
Marles-les-Mines is a small town of about six thousand people west of Béthune, in the hilly western fringe of the coalfield, and the headframe known as the Vieux-Deux, the old Number Two, stands among its houses as a stubborn monument. The Compagnie des mines de Marles sank its shafts here in the nineteenth century, and the pit worked until the twentieth. The tall frame has been preserved, and together with the nearby terril and the cités around it, forms part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, the World Heritage Site listed in 2012.
Read the complete Chevalement du Vieux-Deux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chevalement du Vieux-Deux comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor.
Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic stops under the Menin Gate in Ypres, and buglers from the local fire brigade sound the Last Post in memory of the soldiers of the British Empire who died in the Ypres Salient during the First World War. The ceremony has been held almost every evening since 1928, interrupted only during the German occupation in the Second World War, and it draws crowds of all ages, many of them descendants of the fallen. The gate itself is inscribed with the names of more than fifty thousand soldiers whose bodies were never found. It is one of the sites included in the World Heritage inscription of the Funerary and Memory Sites of the First World War, inscribed in 2023.
Read the complete Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 125 km into the recorded legs you reach Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor. Next is back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement du Vieux-Deux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux, late in the day. Next is Cités de la Solitude.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités de la Solitude write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cités de la Solitude. That is the ride.
Cités de la Solitude → Chevalement du Vieux-Deux is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chevalement du Vieux-Deux → Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Funerary and memory sites of the First Wor → back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux → Cités de la Solitude is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.