Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres and Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres

   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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres is where the day begins. Next is Terril 80 et cité des Garennes.

2. 2. Terril 80 et cité des Garennes

   Liévin is a town that knows grief. On 27 December 1974, a firedamp explosion at the Saint-Amé pit killed forty-two miners, one of the last great mining disasters in France, and it is still remembered every year. The town sits on the southern edge of the coal basin, next to Lens, and its landscape is still marked by the industry: Terril 80, a spoil heap from one of the pits, and the Cité des Garennes, a settlement of miners' houses, are part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site.

   Read the complete Terril 80 et cité des Garennes write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Terril 80 et cité des Garennes comes up about 21 km into the recorded legs. Next is Terril 140.

3. 3. Terril 140

   Rising out of the flat fields north of Douai, the black, cone-shaped hill of Terril 140 is not a natural feature at all: it is a heap of mining waste, the spoil left over from decades of coal extraction. The mining basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a cultural landscape, is studded with hundreds of these terrils, some flat-topped, some pointed, and together with the pitheads, workers' housing and railways they tell the story of an industry that shaped the region for nearly three centuries.

   Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 46 km into the recorded legs you reach Terril 140. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.

4. 4. Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain

   Escaudain sits in the old heartland of the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin, the oldest and once the most powerful of the coal companies in northern France, and the landscape around it is pure mining country: rows of brick terraces, spoil heaps, old railway embankments and the occasional headframe standing like a monument. This is the Valenciennes end of the coalfield, close to the Belgian border, and it was here that coal mining in the north began in the eighteenth century. The town and its surroundings form one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, which UNESCO inscribed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape.

   Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, about halfway. Next is back through Terril 140.

5. 5. back through Terril 140

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Terril 140 sits at 105 km, about halfway. Next is back through Terril 80 et cité des Garennes.

6. 6. back through Terril 80 et cité des Garennes

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Terril 80 et cité des Garennes write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Terril 80 et cité des Garennes comes up about 129 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres.

7. 7. 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.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres closes the day.