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 269 km round trip from Barlin - roughly 3 h 42 in the saddle. On the way it passes Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines, Beffroi de Bergues and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Picture a pit village at six in the morning in 1950: men walking to the headframe with their lunch tins, the siren calling the shift, the women already up and stoking the stoves, children getting ready for the company school. The ensemble around Fosse n°7, near Maisnil-lès-Ruitz and Barlin, preserves the setting for that daily routine: the pit buildings, the housing, the paths between them, and the terril rising nearby. It was a self-contained world, owned and run by the mining company, which provided houses, coal for heating, schools, churches and even doctors, in exchange for loyalty and hard work. The site is one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin on the UNESCO list.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines.
Comines is one of those towns the border runs straight through. The river Lys, the Leie to the Flemish, divides French Comines from Belgian Comines-Warneton, and you can cross from one country to the other on a bridge without noticing much more than a change in the shape of the street signs. On the French side the town hall and its belfry stand over the main square, a tall brick tower in the Flemish style with a pointed roof and a carillon, part of the group of belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines comes up about 68 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de Bergues.
Bergues found a new kind of fame in 2008, when the comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, filmed here, became one of the most successful French films of all time, and suddenly the whole country wanted to see the town where a postman from the south is exiled to the cold north and ends up falling in love with it. The film's best-known scenes include the belfry, from which the hero rings the carillon, and the town still welcomes visitors who come in search of the locations. But Bergues was a proud place long before cinema arrived. It is a small fortified town in French Flanders, surrounded by ramparts and canals, with fortifications improved by Vauban in the seventeenth century.
Read the complete Beffroi de Bergues write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 134 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de Bergues. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines, late in the day. Next is Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7. That is the ride.
Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines → Beffroi de Bergues is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Bergues → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines is 68 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Comines → Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 is 67 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.