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 292 km round trip from Achicourt - roughly 5 h 02 in the saddle. The stops in between: Cité du Pont, Chevalement du Vieux-Deux, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul and Voormalig Stadhuis met Belfort. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
The people of Arras call their citadel la belle inutile, the beautiful useless one, and they say it with affection. Vauban built it in the late seventeenth century, after Louis XIV took Artois from Spain, as part of the chain of fortresses meant to lock France's northern border. Its star-shaped ramparts, bastions and moats are textbook Vauban, but the border moved north before the fortress ever saw a serious siege, hence the nickname. It is one of the twelve sites grouped as the Fortifications of Vauban on the UNESCO list since 2008. Its later history is darker: during the Second World War, the Germans executed resistance fighters in the moat, and a memorial there lists their names.
Read the complete La citadella d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
La citadella d’Arras is where the day begins. Next is Cité du Pont.
Wingles sits on the northern edge of the coal basin, between Lens and La Bassée, where the mining towns give way to the canals and fields of the Weppes and the outskirts of Lille. The Cité du Pont is one of its miners' settlements, rows of brick houses built for the workers of the local pits, and it is part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site. The name, the bridge settlement, hints at the importance of the waterways that crisscross this flat land.
Read the complete Cité du Pont write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité du Pont comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Chevalement du Vieux-Deux.
Marles-les-Mines is a small town of about six thousand people west of Béthune, in the hilly western fringe of the coalfield, and the headframe known as the Vieux-Deux, the old Number Two, stands among its houses as a stubborn monument. The Compagnie des mines de Marles sank its shafts here in the nineteenth century, and the pit worked until the twentieth. The tall frame has been preserved, and together with the nearby terril and the cités around it, forms part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, the World Heritage Site listed in 2012.
Read the complete Chevalement du Vieux-Deux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 69 km into the recorded legs you reach Chevalement du Vieux-Deux. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul.
Bailleul sits in French Flanders, so close to the Belgian border that you can hear Flemish place names on every signpost, and its town hall belfry, rising over the main square with a pointed spire and a carillon, looks every bit as Flemish as the towers of Ypres or Bruges. Like much of the town, it is a rebuilding: Bailleul was almost entirely destroyed in the spring of 1918, during the German offensive in Flanders, and was reconstructed in the 1920s in a neo-Flemish style of brick, stepped gables and decorative stonework. The belfry is one of the belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul, about halfway. Next is Voormalig Stadhuis met Belfort.
Lo is one of the smallest towns in Belgium, a cluster of brick houses around a market square in the flat polders of the Westhoek, a few kilometres from the French border. Its former town hall, built in the sixteenth century in Renaissance style, has a small belfry tower, and it is part of the UNESCO-listed Belfries of Belgium and France, alongside much grander towers in Bruges, Ghent and Lille. It is a reminder that even tiny towns had civic pride and privileges worth announcing to the world.
Read the complete Voormalig Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Voormalig Stadhuis met Belfort sits at 146 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul comes up about 183 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement du Vieux-Deux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 225 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux. Next is back through Cité du Pont.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Pont write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité du Pont, late in the day. Next is La citadella d’Arras.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete La citadella d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 292 km.
La citadella d’Arras → Cité du Pont is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité du Pont → Chevalement du Vieux-Deux is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chevalement du Vieux-Deux → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul → Voormalig Stadhuis met Belfort is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Voormalig Stadhuis met Belfort → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Bailleul → back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chevalement du Vieux-Deux → back through Cité du Pont is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité du Pont → La citadella d’Arras is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.