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 Barlin it runs 158 km to Barlin; allow about 2 h 43 of riding. The stops in between: Cité des Sports Wingles, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos, Belfort en Stadhuis and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos. 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 Cité des Sports Wingles.
Wingles is a town of nine thousand people in the old mining basin, sitting on the edge of the plain where the Lens-Béthune coal fields meet the canal of La Bassée. The coal here was dug from the mid-nineteenth century, and the town still bears the marks: rows of workers' houses, a handful of pit headframes, and slag heaps that rise from the farmland. The sports complex that gives this stop its name is a modern echo of the old social life of the mine, when companies built stadiums, bandstands and gymnasia for their workers, and brass bands and football clubs were as central to the community as the pit itself.
Read the complete Cité des Sports Wingles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité des Sports Wingles comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos.
Loos is a town on the southwestern edge of Lille, and its town hall belfry is part of the same UNESCO family as the medieval towers of Bruges and Ghent, though it is a much more modern member. In this corner of Europe a belfry was the symbol of a town's independence from lord and church, and when the industrial towns of the Nord built new town halls in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they gave them belfries too, as a statement that they had grown up. Loos's tower, in brick and stone, does exactly that.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 50 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos. 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.
Belfort en Stadhuis, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos sits at 105 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cité des Sports Wingles.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité des Sports Wingles write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité des Sports Wingles comes up about 132 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 closes the day.
Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 → Cité des Sports Wingles is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité des Sports Wingles → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos → Belfort en Stadhuis is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Belfort en Stadhuis → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Loos → back through Cité des Sports Wingles is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité des Sports Wingles → Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.