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.
151 km from Saint-Ghislain to Saint-Ghislain, about 2 h 36 of riding. On the way it passes Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat, Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle, Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau and Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are. 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 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, about halfway. 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.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are sits at 76 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 94 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 111 km into the recorded legs you reach back through 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.
The route ends here after 151 km.
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 → Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are → back through Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Pompe à feu de la fosse du Sarteau → back through Ensemble minier de La Sentinelle is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through 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.