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 171 km round trip from Carvin - roughly 2 h 40 in the saddle. The stops in between: Cité n°10, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras, Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
A town hall makes an odd target for a ride, but Carvin's is a good excuse to stop in a place most people only see from the A1. The town sits on the northern edge of the old coalfield, between Lens and Lille, and its civic buildings and squares reflect the confidence of a community that grew with the mines. Like many such places, Carvin's centre is a mix of brick, stone and post-war rebuilding, and the town hall faces a square with cafés, bakeries and a market on certain days.
Read the complete Hôtel de ville write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hôtel de ville is where the day begins. Next is Cité n°10.
Sains-en-Gohelle is a former coal town in the heart of the Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin, and Cité n°10 is one of its old mining estates, rows of brick houses built for miners and their families around a pithead. The basin, which stretches about 120 kilometres from the Belgian border towards the west, was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, and the cités, the slag heaps and the headframes are its most visible remains.
Read the complete Cité n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité n°10 comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Arras has two great squares, the Grand-Place and the Place des Héros, surrounded by tall Flemish-baroque houses with curved gables and arcades, and towering above them is the belfry of the town hall, over seventy metres high. It looks medieval, but most of it is a careful reconstruction: Arras was devastated by German artillery during the First World War, when the front line ran just east of the town for years, and the belfry was destroyed in 1914. After the war, the people of Arras rebuilt it, along with the squares, and today it is one of the belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 51 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. Next is Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres.
Houdain is a mining town in the Pas-de-Calais, a couple of kilometres from Bruay and a short hop from Béthune, and its workers' estates carry names that read like a municipal promise: Victory and Trees. They belong to the western end of the northern French coalfield, which stretches in a long band across the Nord and Pas-de-Calais and which was the engine of the region for more than two centuries. Here the company built housing on a scale that still surprises. Whole districts of identical brick houses, each with its own garden plot, were laid out in rows and crescents, so that miners and their families would live close to the pit and under the eye of their employer.
Read the complete Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras sits at 113 km, about halfway. Next is back through Cité n°10.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité n°10 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité n°10 comes up about 145 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hôtel de ville.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hôtel de ville write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hôtel de ville closes the day.
Hôtel de ville → Cité n°10 is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité n°10 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de la Victoire et des Arbres → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → back through Cité n°10 is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité n°10 → Hôtel de ville is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.