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.
A 161 km round trip from Denain - roughly 2 h 47 in the saddle. On the way it passes Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau, Major Mining Sites of Wallonia, The Four Lifts on the Canal du Centre and and back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Denain is remembered in French history for an afternoon in July 1712, when Marshal Villars crossed the Scheldt and smashed an allied army under Prince Eugene of Savoy, a victory that rescued France in the closing years of the War of the Spanish Succession and is still marked in the town. The Fosse Mathilde belongs to a later and quieter story. A fosse is the northern word for a pit, and these shafts were named for company directors and their families, so Mathilde was a lady before she was a hole in the ground.
Read the complete Fosse Mathilde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse Mathilde is where the day begins. Next is Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau.
Coal was first found in France not far from here. In 1720, prospectors working near Fresnes-sur-Escaut struck a seam, and within a few years the Anzin company was sinking shafts all along the valley of the Escaut, the river the Dutch and Belgians call the Scheldt. The Pompe à feu, the fire pump, is the old steam engine house at the Sarteau pit in Vieux-Condé, and its name comes from the early engines, which burned coal to make steam and pumped water out of the workings. Inside the red brick building the beam engine would have towered over the floor with its great rocking arm. The whole mining basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape, and the pit at Sarteau is one of the pieces of it.
Read the complete Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau comes up about 24 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 51 km into the recorded legs you reach Major Mining Sites of Wallonia. Next is The Four Lifts on the Canal du Centre and.
Picture a barge sitting in a huge iron tank full of water, rising more than fifteen metres into the air while another tank, counterweighted, sinks beside it. That is what happens at the four hydraulic boat lifts on the old Canal du Centre in Hainaut, built between the 1880s and 1917 to carry boats over a steep change in level between the basins of the Meuse and the Scheldt. They were engineering marvels in their day, cast-iron and steel giants powered by water pressure, and they are still in working order, though now mostly used by pleasure boats. UNESCO listed them, along with their surroundings, in 1998.
Read the complete The Four Lifts on the Canal du Centre and write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Four Lifts on the Canal du Centre and, about halfway. Next is back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Major Mining Sites of Wallonia write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia sits at 107 km, about halfway. Next is back through Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau comes up about 136 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fosse Mathilde.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fosse Mathilde write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse Mathilde closes the day.
Fosse Mathilde → Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau → Major Mining Sites of Wallonia is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Major Mining Sites of Wallonia → The Four Lifts on the Canal du Centre and is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Four Lifts on the Canal du Centre and → back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Major Mining Sites of Wallonia → back through Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau → Fosse Mathilde is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.