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 294 km round trip from Auchel - roughly 5 h 04 in the saddle. The stops in between: Cité des Petits Bois, Fosse n°2 de Flines, Château Dampierre and Beffroi de Mons. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
In the centre of Auchel, the war memorial stands as it does in every French town and village, listing the names of the men who died in the First and Second World Wars, and in mining towns these lists are often heartbreakingly long. But the memorials of the coalfield have a particular resonance, because the front line of the First World War ran through the edge of the mining basin, only a few kilometres east of here. The Germans occupied Lens and the eastern pits for most of the war, and when they withdrew in 1918, they flooded and sabotaged the mines, which took years to restore. Auchel and the western towns, on the Allied side, kept producing coal for the war effort under constant pressure.
Read the complete Monument aux morts write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument aux morts is where the day begins. Next is Cité des Petits Bois.
There is a particular kind of street in the old coalfield that outsiders mistake for suburban normality. Rows of identical brick houses, each with a small front garden, line a gently curving road, with a school at one end and a church at the other. These are the cités, built by the mining companies to house their workers, and the Cité des Petits Bois at Liévin is one of them. It belongs to the same family as the cités of the Solitude, named on this ride, and together they tell how a company could organise the life of its men from cradle to pit head.
Read the complete Cité des Petits Bois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité des Petits Bois comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fosse n°2 de Flines.
The headframe is the giveaway. In the low, watery country between Lallaing, Anhiers and Flines-lez-Raches, the steel or concrete winding towers of old coal pits still stand as markers, and Fosse n°2 de Flines is one of the sites that recall the industry that shaped this corner of the Douai area. A fosse in the local vocabulary is a pit with its shafts, buildings and spoil heap, and around each one a small world grew: rows of brick housing, a church, a school, and the company offices that ran the lives of everyone underground and above it.
Read the complete Fosse n°2 de Flines write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 69 km into the recorded legs you reach Fosse n°2 de Flines. Next is Château Dampierre.
Anzin, on the northern edge of Valenciennes, is where coal mining in northern France began on an industrial scale. In the eighteenth century, the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin became one of the largest companies in France, and its mines, workers' housing, slag heaps and buildings shaped the landscape of the region. Château Dampierre is one of the buildings linked to that history, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, inscribed in 2012, which preserves more than a hundred sites across a vast area: pits, headframes, miners' cités, churches, schools and the great black spoil heaps known as terrils. The big miners' strike at Anzin in 1884 helped inspire Émile Zola's novel Germinal.
Read the complete Château Dampierre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Château Dampierre, about halfway. 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 sits at 147 km, about halfway. Next is back through Château Dampierre.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Château Dampierre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Château Dampierre comes up about 191 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Fosse n°2 de Flines.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fosse n°2 de Flines 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 Fosse n°2 de Flines. Next is back through Cité des Petits Bois.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité des Petits Bois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité des Petits Bois, late in the day. Next is Monument aux morts.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monument aux morts write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 294 km.
Monument aux morts → Cité des Petits Bois is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité des Petits Bois → Fosse n°2 de Flines is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fosse n°2 de Flines → Château Dampierre is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château Dampierre → Beffroi de Mons is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Mons → back through Château Dampierre is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Château Dampierre → back through Fosse n°2 de Flines is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fosse n°2 de Flines → back through Cité des Petits Bois is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité des Petits Bois → Monument aux morts is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.