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.
From Fresnes-sur-Escaut it runs 247 km to Fresnes-sur-Escaut; allow about 4 h 16 of riding. The stops in between: Cité de la Parisienne, Belfort en Stadhuis and back through Cité de la Parisienne. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules.
Fresnes-sur-Escaut sits right beside the Belgian border, on the river Escaut, which flows north into Belgium as the Scheldt. In 1720, so the story goes, coal was found here for the first time in the Nord, and that find began the transformation of the region. The Compagnie des Mines d'Anzin, founded later in the eighteenth century, became one of the largest industrial enterprises in France and helped create the landscape you ride through today.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la Compagnie des Mines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de la Compagnie des Mines is where the day begins. Next is Cité de la Parisienne.
Drocourt is the sort of place you could ride through without a second glance, and you would miss a small piece of the story of northern France. The Cité de la Parisienne is a mining housing estate on the edge of the town, a grid of brick houses built by the coal company for its workers and their families, part of the UNESCO-listed Mining Basin. The name comes from the company that dug coal here. Hénin-Beaumont and Rouvroy press in on either side, and the black cones of the slag heaps rise above the rooftops.
Read the complete Cité de la Parisienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité de la Parisienne comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Belfort en Stadhuis.
British soldiers marching to the front in the First World War left Ypres by the road that led east towards Menen, and the gate they passed through became the Menin Gate, now a memorial bearing the names of more than fifty thousand soldiers with no known grave. Menen itself, about twenty kilometres from Ypres, sits right on the French border, on the river Leie, which the French call the Lys, and its town hall and belfry, standing on the market square, are part of the UNESCO listing of the belfries of Belgium and France. The belfry, like much of the town, was damaged in the war and rebuilt, and it remains the proud symbol of the town's civic history.
Read the complete Belfort en Stadhuis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 124 km into the recorded legs you reach Belfort en Stadhuis. Next is back through Cité de la Parisienne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité de la Parisienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité de la Parisienne, late in the day. Next is Ensemble minier de la Compagnie des Mines.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la Compagnie des Mines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Ensemble minier de la Compagnie des Mines. That is the ride.
Ensemble minier de la Compagnie des Mines → Cité de la Parisienne is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité de la Parisienne → Belfort en Stadhuis is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Belfort en Stadhuis → back through Cité de la Parisienne is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité de la Parisienne → Ensemble minier de la Compagnie des Mines is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.