Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel and Terril 34

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel

   A dispensary may seem an odd thing to visit, but this is a monument to something remarkable. In the nineteenth century the coal companies of northern France built housing, schools, churches and clinics for their workers, partly out of paternalism and partly to keep a stable workforce, and the miners themselves set up mutual aid societies, the sociétés de secours mutuel, to pay for doctors, medicines and funerals. The dispensary at Bully-les-Mines belongs to that world of care and control, and it is one of the buildings that explain why UNESCO listed the whole mining basin in 2012. The brick architecture has a plain, solid dignity, and the sense of a community looking after its own is easy to feel.

   Read the complete Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel is where the day begins. Next is Cité du château des Dames.

2. 2. Cité du château des Dames

   South of Bruay-la-Buissière the land stops being a miners' plain and starts to feel like Artois, with small rivers, wooded valleys and the first rolling hills. It is the sort of cité that you come across by accident, a cluster of brick houses with gardens, set a little apart from the village, built for the Compagnie des mines de Béthune or one of its neighbours. UNESCO's 2012 listing included many of these, and each has a slightly different plan.

   Read the complete Cité du château des Dames write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Cité du château des Dames comes up about 23 km into the recorded legs. Next is Terril 34.

3. 3. Terril 34

   A terril is a slag heap, a mountain of waste rock dumped beside a coal mine, and in the flat land of northern France these man-made hills are the closest thing to relief for miles around. Terril 34 is one of hundreds that dot the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, a UNESCO site since 2012, which recognises not only the heaps but also the pithead frames, miners' housing estates, schools, churches and railway lines that made up the landscape of coal mining in the region for nearly three centuries. This one sits near Norrent-Fontes and Lillers, at the western end of the basin, where it meets the chalk hills of Artois.

   Read the complete Terril 34 write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   about 47 km into the recorded legs you reach Terril 34. Next is back through Cité du château des Dames.

4. 4. back through Cité du château des Dames

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Cité du château des Dames write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   back through Cité du château des Dames, late in the day. Next is Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel.

5. 5. Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   Back at Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel. That is the ride.