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.
250 km from Petite-Forêt to Petite-Forêt, about 4 h 19 of riding. It goes by way of Cité du Pont, Het Belfort of Halletoren and back through Cité du Pont. 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.
France's coalfield is a long, narrow band that runs from Béthune in the west to the Belgian border in the east, and at its eastern end, around Valenciennes, the ground still carries traces of the first mines. The Anzin company, which controlled much of this area in the nineteenth century, dug shafts, built pumping stations and laid out workers' housing, and in 1884 Émile Zola came to the district to research Germinal, his great novel of a miners' strike. The ensemble at La Sentinelle includes the old pumping engine house of the Sarteau pit, a survivor from that early industrial age, and the nearby Cités de Beaurepaire, rows of company housing for miners and their families. The whole mining basin was listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle is where the day begins. Next is Cité du Pont.
Wingles sits on the northern edge of the coal basin, between Lens and La Bassée, where the mining towns give way to the canals and fields of the Weppes and the outskirts of Lille. The Cité du Pont is one of its miners' settlements, rows of brick houses built for the workers of the local pits, and it is part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site. The name, the bridge settlement, hints at the importance of the waterways that crisscross this flat land.
Read the complete Cité du Pont write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité du Pont comes up about 63 km into the recorded legs. Next is Het Belfort of Halletoren.
On the Grote Markt of Kortrijk a tower stands alone in the middle of the square, as if the building it belonged to had wandered off. In a sense it did. The Belfort, or Halletoren, was once part of the cloth hall, the trading heart of a medieval textile town, and when the hall disappeared the tower stayed. It is one of the belfries of Belgium and France on the UNESCO list, and it has a pair of local celebrities at the top: two gilded figures, Manten and Kalle, who strike the hours on the bell. Kortrijk people are fond of them, and you will see their likenesses on all sorts of souvenirs.
Read the complete Het Belfort of Halletoren write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 125 km into the recorded legs you reach Het Belfort of Halletoren. Next is back through Cité du Pont.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Pont write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité du Pont, late in the day. Next is Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle. That is the ride.
Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle → Cité du Pont is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité du Pont → Het Belfort of Halletoren is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Het Belfort of Halletoren → back through Cité du Pont is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité du Pont → Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.