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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 160 km round trip from Liévin - roughly 3 h 03 in the saddle. On the way it passes Stade Parc, Terril 32, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin and back through Terril 32. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The Grands Bureaux of the mining company at Liévin are the opposite of a pit: a big, solid brick office building where the engineers, accountants and managers ran the underground world from desks. Built in the style of company headquarters across the basin, with generous windows, a formal entrance and a clock, the building announces that coal was a serious business, with a payroll, a hierarchy and a public face. It sits in the town centre, a few hundred metres from the heart of Liévin, and it forms part of the Mining Basin that UNESCO listed in 2012.
Read the complete Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de is where the day begins. Next is Stade Parc.
This was once a landscape of pits, headframes and long rows of brick miners' housing, and in 2012 the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin was added to the UNESCO list as a cultural landscape. The stadium or park in the label is part of that story in a quieter way, because company towns like Bruay built sports grounds, brass bands and parks for their workers, and the community life around a pit was as important as the pit itself.
Read the complete Stade Parc write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stade Parc comes up about 22 km into the recorded legs. Next is Terril 32.
Out on the western fringe of the coal basin, where the mining country fades into the farmland of the Lys valley and the edge of the Artois hills, Terril 32 rises near Norrent-Fontes, Mametz and Thérouanne. This is the far end of the seam, a long way from the dense cités around Lens and Douai, and the countryside feels it: smaller villages, more fields, more trees, and pits that were fewer and further between. The heap stands almost like a lone hill above the cropland, a reminder that coal reached even here.
Read the complete Terril 32 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 43 km into the recorded legs you reach Terril 32. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin.
Hesdin is a small market town in the green valley of the Canche, in the Pas-de-Calais, and it owes its existence to an act of destruction. The original town, a few kilometres upstream, was razed in 1553 by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and a new fortified town was built here the following year as a strongpoint on the frontier between France and the Habsburg Netherlands. The grid of streets and the large market square still follow that plan. On the square stands the town hall, a former palace of the Habsburg governors, with a beautifully carved Renaissance balcony from which proclamations were read, and its belfry is part of the UNESCO list of belfries in Belgium and France.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin, about halfway. Next is back through Terril 32.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 32 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 32 sits at 122 km, about halfway. Next is back through Stade Parc.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stade Parc write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stade Parc comes up about 137 km into the recorded legs. Next is Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de closes the day.
Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de → Stade Parc is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stade Parc → Terril 32 is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 32 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin → back through Terril 32 is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 32 → back through Stade Parc is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Stade Parc → Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de is 22 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.