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 Denain it runs 163 km to Denain; allow about 2 h 49 of riding. It goes by way of Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille and back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 26 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
The name on the label belongs to the most famous pit in the whole northern coalfield. Fosse Delloye, at Lewarde a short ride west of here, closed in 1971 and became the Centre Historique Minier, France's largest mining museum, where former miners once guided visitors through reconstructed galleries and the old lamp rooms, showers and machine halls still stand as they were left. The point itself, though, sits beside Denain on the Escaut, and Denain deserves a story of its own.
Read the complete Fosse Delloye write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse Delloye is where the day begins. Next is Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Black hills on a flat land. That is the image most people keep of the Nord-Pas de Calais coal basin, a band of former mining country stretching about 120 kilometres from the Belgian border westward towards Béthune, where for nearly three centuries coal was dug from deep underground. The slag heaps, the terrils, rise like pyramids above the towns, and the mining villages, the cités, line the streets in rows of brick houses. In 2012 the basin was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised as a living cultural landscape, with over three hundred elements protected.
Read the complete Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. Next is Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai.
Five towers. That is what everyone remembers about Tournai's cathedral, and when you first see them rising above the rooftops of this old city on the Scheldt, they seem almost too many for one building. The cathedral of Notre-Dame is one of the great churches of Europe, with a massive Romanesque nave and transept from the twelfth century and a later Gothic choir, tall and light, built in the following century. The combination is a lesson in medieval architecture, and it earned the building a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It has been under long restoration after a storm in 1999 damaged the structure, so parts may be covered in scaffolding when you visit.
Read the complete Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 51 km into the recorded legs you reach Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille.
Lille's town hall belfry is a child of the twentieth century. After the old town hall was lost, the architect Émile Dubuisson built a new one in the 1920s and early 1930s in a working-class district south of the centre, and its belfry, rising about 104 metres, is the tallest civic belfry in Europe. Built of reinforced concrete and brick in an Art Deco reinterpretation of the Flemish tradition, it is part of the UNESCO-listed Belfries of Belgium and France, a group that celebrates the towers built by towns to symbolise their freedom and civic pride.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille, about halfway. Next is back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai sits at 109 km, about halfway. Next is back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin comes up about 139 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fosse Delloye.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fosse Delloye write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse Delloye closes the day.
Fosse Delloye → Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin → Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille → back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai → back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin → Fosse Delloye is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.