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.
From Lens it runs 400 km to Lens; allow about 6 h 54 of riding. The stops in between: Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron, Cité du Rivage ancienne, Beffroi de Mons and Petit Béguinage de Gent. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Lens is a mining town that was flattened in the First World War and rebuilt in brick, and the monument to the dead of 1914 to 1918 stands as a reminder of what happened here. Lines of trenches ran across this plain for years, and the surrounding ridges, Vimy and Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, were the scene of huge battles. At Vimy, the great white Canadian memorial stands on the ridge, commemorating the attack of April 1917 in which Canadian troops took the hill, and the preserved trenches and tunnels can be visited. At Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, a vast French military cemetery and a lantern tower hold the remains of tens of thousands of soldiers. They are quiet places, and the silence is part of the experience.
Read the complete Monument aux morts 1914-1918 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument aux morts 1914-1918 is where the day begins. Next is Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron.
Montigny-en-Ostrevent is a small town in the Ostrevent, the strip of land between the Scarpe and the Escaut rivers east of Douai, and its miners' settlements, the Cités de Montigny and du Moucheron, are typical of the housing built by the mining companies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rows of brick houses with small gardens, built along straight streets, often with a church, a school and a shop nearby, formed the backbone of community life in the coalfield. These cités are part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site.
Read the complete Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Brick terraced houses, small gardens and a straight street running toward the Escaut: at first glance the Cité du Rivage in Bruay-sur-l'Escaut looks like any working-class neighbourhood in northern France. It is part of something much larger. In 2012, UNESCO listed the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, a landscape of pit villages, headframes, slag heaps and railways stretching over a hundred kilometres, as a monument to three centuries of coal. This cité is one of its many fragments, an early housing development built by the mining companies to keep their workers close to the pits.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 69 km into the recorded legs you reach Cité du Rivage ancienne. Next is Beffroi de Mons.
Belgium has many belfries, but only one in the baroque style, and it rises above Mons on the hill where the medieval castle stood. Built in the seventeenth century, it is about eighty-seven metres tall, with a carillon of forty-nine bells, and it was listed by UNESCO with the other belfries of Belgium and France. A lift takes visitors to the top, where the view stretches across the Borinage, the old coal-mining country around the city, and over the rooftops of the old town. Inside, an interpretation centre tells the story of the tower.
Read the complete Beffroi de Mons write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Mons, about halfway. Next is Petit Béguinage de Gent.
Push open a gate off a busy Ghent street and the noise drops away. The Klein Begijnhof, the Small Béguinage, is a walled enclave of whitewashed and brick houses with stepped gables around a green courtyard and a Baroque church. Béguines were lay women who lived in community, devoted to prayer and work but without taking permanent vows, and this béguinage was founded in the thirteenth century. Most of the present buildings date from the seventeenth century. Together with other Flemish béguinages, it is on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and it remains one of the calmest places in the city.
Read the complete Petit Béguinage de Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Petit Béguinage de Gent sits at 200 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de Mons.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de Mons write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de Mons comes up about 290 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 329 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cité du Rivage ancienne. Next is back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron, late in the day. Next is Monument aux morts 1914-1918.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monument aux morts 1914-1918 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 400 km.
Monument aux morts 1914-1918 → Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron → Cité du Rivage ancienne is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité du Rivage ancienne → Beffroi de Mons is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Mons → Petit Béguinage de Gent is 91 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Petit Béguinage de Gent → back through Beffroi de Mons is 91 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Beffroi de Mons → back through Cité du Rivage ancienne is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité du Rivage ancienne → back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron → Monument aux morts 1914-1918 is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.