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.
81 km from Saint-Ghislain to Saint-Ghislain, about 1 h 24 of riding. On the way it passes Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat, Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle and back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules.
A coal mine designed like a neoclassical palace sounds like a joke, but Grand-Hornu is real, and the man behind it meant every column. Henri De Gorge, a mining entrepreneur, took over a failing colliery at Hornu in the early nineteenth century and built, between about 1810 and 1830, a complex of workshops, offices and workers' housing around a great oval courtyard. The buildings are in pale stone and brick, with arcades, pediments and a perfect sense of proportion. De Gorge was an idealist, and he wanted his workers to live in decent houses with gardens, which was unusual in an age of slums.
Read the complete Grand Hornu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grand Hornu 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 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle.
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.
about 41 km into the recorded legs you reach Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle. 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 Grand Hornu.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grand Hornu write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Grand Hornu. That is the ride.
Grand Hornu → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
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.
Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat → Grand Hornu is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.