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.
From Oignies it runs 165 km to Oignies; allow about 2 h 36 of riding. It goes by way of Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras, Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Oignies is a small town in the Pas-de-Calais, at the edge of the old coal basin near the border with the Nord, with a monument at its heart to the people who lived and died by the pits.
Read the complete Monument à Madame Declercq write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument à Madame Declercq is where the day begins. Next is Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel.
A dispensary may seem an odd thing to visit, but this is a monument to something remarkable. In the nineteenth century the coal companies of northern France built housing, schools, churches and clinics for their workers, partly out of paternalism and partly to keep a stable workforce, and the miners themselves set up mutual aid societies, the sociétés de secours mutuel, to pay for doctors, medicines and funerals. The dispensary at Bully-les-Mines belongs to that world of care and control, and it is one of the buildings that explain why UNESCO listed the whole mining basin in 2012. The brick architecture has a plain, solid dignity, and the sense of a community looking after its own is easy to feel.
Read the complete Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel comes up about 24 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 Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7.
Picture a pit village at six in the morning in 1950: men walking to the headframe with their lunch tins, the siren calling the shift, the women already up and stoking the stoves, children getting ready for the company school. The ensemble around Fosse n°7, near Maisnil-lès-Ruitz and Barlin, preserves the setting for that daily routine: the pit buildings, the housing, the paths between them, and the terril rising nearby. It was a self-contained world, owned and run by the mining company, which provided houses, coal for heating, schools, churches and even doctors, in exchange for loyalty and hard work. The site is one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin on the UNESCO list.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7, 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 105 km, about halfway. Next is back through Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel comes up about 141 km into the recorded legs. Next is Monument à Madame Declercq.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monument à Madame Declercq write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument à Madame Declercq closes the day.
Monument à Madame Declercq → Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ensemble minier de la fosse n°7 → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 32 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 Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Dispensaire Société de Secours Mutuel → Monument à Madame Declercq is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.