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 148 km round trip from Saint-Ghislain - roughly 2 h 33 in the saddle. On the way it passes Château de l’Hermitage, Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are, Fosse n°2 de Flines and back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 Château de l’Hermitage.
On the Franco-Belgian border, in a forest that has never much cared which country it is in, a pale classical château stands in a clearing. The Château de l'Hermitage was built in the eighteenth century for the dukes of Croÿ, one of the great aristocratic families of the region, as a refined country retreat, and it sits just inside France, near Condé-sur-l'Escaut, at the edge of the forest of Bon-Secours. The family's title went back centuries, and their estates spread across both sides of what is now the border.
Read the complete Château de l’Hermitage write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château de l’Hermitage comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are.
Anyone who follows cycling knows the Trouée d'Arenberg, the arrow-straight cobbled lane through the forest near Wallers where Paris-Roubaix often breaks apart. What fewer know is that the lane passes the gate of a colliery, and that the colliery is one of the jewels of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site. Fosse Arenberg, with its three steel headframes and brick engine houses, closed in 1989, and a few years later Claude Berri filmed his version of Zola's Germinal here, using the pithead and the cités around it as a ready-made nineteenth-century mining town.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 49 km into the recorded legs you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are. Next is Fosse n°2 de Flines.
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, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are sits at 99 km, about halfway. Next is back through Château de l’Hermitage.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Château de l’Hermitage write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Château de l’Hermitage comes up about 124 km into the recorded legs. 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.
Grand Hornu closes the day.
Grand Hornu → Château de l’Hermitage is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château de l’Hermitage → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are → Fosse n°2 de Flines is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fosse n°2 de Flines → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are → back through Château de l’Hermitage is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Château de l’Hermitage → Grand Hornu is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.