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.
297 km from Saint-Ghislain to Saint-Ghislain, about 5 h 07 of riding. On the way it passes Coron des 120, Cités de la Solitude, Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens and Terril 34. 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 Coron des 120.
The Coron des 120 is among the most famous rows of miners' houses in France, partly because a film crew chose it. A coron is a long terrace of identical brick cottages built by a mining company, and this one, with its endless line of doors, chimneys and small gardens, was used in the 1993 film of Germinal, Zola's novel of the miners' strike. It lies near Anzin and Petite-Forêt, in the Valenciennes area, at the heart of the mining basin that UNESCO listed in 2012.
Read the complete Coron des 120 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Coron des 120 comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités de la Solitude.
On the edge of Waziers, near Douai, the cités de la Solitude are rows of brick houses built by a mining company for its workers, laid out in neat streets with small gardens. Such company towns, the cités minières, were the backbone of life in the coal basin of northern France, providing housing, schools, churches and shops for miners and their families, and they are among the most important elements of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012. The name Solitude seems almost ironic for a place built to house so many people close together.
Read the complete Cités de la Solitude write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 69 km into the recorded legs you reach Cités de la Solitude. Next is Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens.
A headframe is the most honest piece of architecture in a mining country, because it exists only to hold up a wheel. The chevalement of Pit 3 bis at Lens is one of those tall, simple frames of concrete or steel, once used to raise coal and men from hundreds of metres underground, and it is now one of the markers of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a living cultural landscape. At the height of the industry, hundreds of such frames stood on this flat country, and the sky was filled with smoke and steam.
Read the complete Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens, about halfway. Next is Terril 34.
A terril is a slag heap, a mountain of waste rock dumped beside a coal mine, and in the flat land of northern France these man-made hills are the closest thing to relief for miles around. Terril 34 is one of hundreds that dot the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, a UNESCO site since 2012, which recognises not only the heaps but also the pithead frames, miners' housing estates, schools, churches and railway lines that made up the landscape of coal mining in the region for nearly three centuries. This one sits near Norrent-Fontes and Lillers, at the western end of the basin, where it meets the chalk hills of Artois.
Read the complete Terril 34 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 34 sits at 149 km, about halfway. Next is back through Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens comes up about 193 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cités de la Solitude.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités de la Solitude write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 227 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cités de la Solitude. Next is back through Coron des 120.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Coron des 120 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Coron des 120, 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 297 km.
Grand Hornu → Coron des 120 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Coron des 120 → Cités de la Solitude is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de la Solitude → Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens → Terril 34 is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 34 → back through Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chevalement du n°3 bis de Lens → back through Cités de la Solitude is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cités de la Solitude → back through Coron des 120 is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Coron des 120 → Grand Hornu is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.