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 Lallaing it runs 156 km to Lallaing; allow about 2 h 41 of riding. It goes by way of Cité Saint-Paul, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille, Belfort en Stadhuis and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille. 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.
The headframe is the giveaway. In the low, watery country between Lallaing, Anhiers and Flines-lez-Raches, the steel or concrete winding towers of old coal pits still stand as markers, and Fosse n°2 de Flines is one of the sites that recall the industry that shaped this corner of the Douai area. A fosse in the local vocabulary is a pit with its shafts, buildings and spoil heap, and around each one a small world grew: rows of brick housing, a church, a school, and the company offices that ran the lives of everyone underground and above it.
Read the complete Fosse n°2 de Flines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse n°2 de Flines is where the day begins. Next is Cité Saint-Paul.
The mining basin of northern France is a flat, open country that seems to have been built entirely by hand, and among the first things you notice are the hills that nature never put there. They are the terrils, the slag heaps of the coal mines, some of them more than a hundred metres high, and around Courrières they punctuate the horizon between rows of brick houses. The Cité Saint-Paul belongs to this world: a miners' housing estate, laid out by the mining company with its rows of uniform houses, gardens, schools and a church, so that a worker could live, shop and pray within the company's reach.
Read the complete Cité Saint-Paul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Saint-Paul comes up about 25 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 53 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille. 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 Lille.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille sits at 104 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cité Saint-Paul.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Saint-Paul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité Saint-Paul comes up about 131 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fosse n°2 de Flines.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fosse n°2 de Flines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse n°2 de Flines closes the day.
Fosse n°2 de Flines → Cité Saint-Paul is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité Saint-Paul → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille → Belfort en Stadhuis is 25 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 Lille is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Lille → back through Cité Saint-Paul is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité Saint-Paul → Fosse n°2 de Flines is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.