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.
230 km from Houdain to Houdain, about 3 h 22 of riding. It goes by way of Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines and back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules.
Houdain is a mining town in the Pas-de-Calais, a couple of kilometres from Bruay and a short hop from Béthune, and its workers' estates carry names that read like a municipal promise: Victory and Trees. They belong to the western end of the northern French coalfield, which stretches in a long band across the Nord and Pas-de-Calais and which was the engine of the region for more than two centuries. Here the company built housing on a scale that still surprises. Whole districts of identical brick houses, each with its own garden plot, were laid out in rows and crescents, so that miners and their families would live close to the pit and under the eye of their employer.
Read the complete Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres is where the day begins. Next is Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron.
Montigny-en-Ostrevent is a small town in the Ostrevent, the strip of land between the Scarpe and the Escaut rivers east of Douai, and its miners' settlements, the Cités de Montigny and du Moucheron, are typical of the housing built by the mining companies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rows of brick houses with small gardens, built along straight streets, often with a church, a school and a shop nearby, formed the backbone of community life in the coalfield. These cités are part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site.
Read the complete Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron comes up about 53 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines.
Comines is one of those towns the border runs straight through. The river Lys, the Leie to the Flemish, divides French Comines from Belgian Comines-Warneton, and you can cross from one country to the other on a bridge without noticing much more than a change in the shape of the street signs. On the French side the town hall and its belfry stand over the main square, a tall brick tower in the Flemish style with a pointed roof and a carillon, part of the group of belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 116 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines. Next is back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron, late in the day. Next is Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres. That is the ride.
Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres → Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines → back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron → Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.