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 Petite-Forêt it runs 81 km to Petite-Forêt; allow about 1 h 24 of riding. It goes by way of Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat, Major Mining Sites of Wallonia and back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat. 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 Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat.
At Condé-sur-l'Escaut, right on the Belgian border, the coal basin of northern France reaches its eastern end, and the old mining site of Chabaud-Latour shows how industry and nature have come to terms. A pit operated here for decades, and today what remains is a landscape of slag heaps, ponds formed by mining subsidence, woods and wetlands, part of the UNESCO site of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat comes up about 17 km into the recorded legs. Next is Major Mining Sites of Wallonia.
Grand-Hornu, on the edge of the Borinage coalfield west of Mons, looks less like a coal mine than a neoclassical palace. In the early nineteenth century the industrialist Henri De Gorge built it as a model colliery, with workshops, offices and stables arranged around a vast oval courtyard of brick arches, and hundreds of houses for workers, each with its own garden, laid out in streets around it. It was a revolutionary idea at the time, combining industry and housing in one planned complex. Mining ended in the mid-twentieth century, and after years of neglect the site was restored. Today it houses a museum of contemporary art and a design centre, and it is one of the four Major Mining Sites of Wallonia listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Major Mining Sites of Wallonia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 41 km into the recorded legs you reach Major Mining Sites of Wallonia. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat, 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 → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat → Major Mining Sites of Wallonia is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Major Mining Sites of Wallonia → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat → Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.