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.
A 154 km round trip from Bruay-la-Buissière - roughly 2 h 25 in the saddle. On the way it passes Terril 80 et cité des Garennes, Terril 140, Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain and back through Terril 140. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The coal companies were not short of optimism when they named their housing. In Bruay-la-Buissière, two neighbouring cités were called the New World and the Flowers, and their brick houses with front gardens, laid out along tidy streets, were meant to sell a better life to the families who came from across France, Poland, Italy and North Africa to work the pits. They belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site, and they remain ordinary homes, so look respectfully.
Read the complete Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs is where the day begins. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 80 et cité des Garennes comes up about 23 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 48 km into the recorded legs you reach Terril 140. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, about halfway. Next is back through Terril 140.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 140 sits at 106 km, about halfway. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 80 et cité des Garennes comes up about 131 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs closes the day.
Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs → Terril 80 et cité des Garennes is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 80 et cité des Garennes → Terril 140 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 140 → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → back through Terril 140 is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 140 → back through Terril 80 et cité des Garennes is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 80 et cité des Garennes → Cités du Nouveau Monde et des Fleurs is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.