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.
A 251 km round trip from Houdain - roughly 4 h 20 in the saddle. The stops in between: Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron, Major Mining Sites of Wallonia and back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
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 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Major Mining Sites of Wallonia.
Grand-Hornu, on the edge of the Borinage coalfield west of Mons, looks less like a coal mine than a neoclassical palace. In the early nineteenth century the industrialist Henri De Gorge built it as a model colliery, with workshops, offices and stables arranged around a vast oval courtyard of brick arches, and hundreds of houses for workers, each with its own garden, laid out in streets around it. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, combining industry and housing in one planned complex. Mining ended in the mid-twentieth century, and after years of neglect the site was restored. Today it houses a museum of contemporary art and a design centre, and it is one of the four Major Mining Sites of Wallonia listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Major Mining Sites of Wallonia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 125 km into the recorded legs you reach Major Mining Sites of Wallonia. 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 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron → Major Mining Sites of Wallonia is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Major Mining Sites of Wallonia → back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron is 63 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 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.