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.
252 km from Auchel to Auchel, about 4 h 21 of riding. It goes by way of Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai, Belfort en Stadhuis and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai. 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 Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai.
The belfry of Douai rises above the town hall like a stone exclamation mark, a tall, square tower with a corner turret and a gilded lion at the top. Belfries were the symbols of medieval towns in Flanders and northern France, built to show that a town had won its freedoms, and to hold the bell that called citizens to meet, fight or put out fires. Douai's was begun in the fourteenth century and finished in the fifteenth, and it is one of the group of belfries of Belgium and France that UNESCO lists together.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Belfort en Stadhuis.
British soldiers marching to the front in the First World War left Ypres by the road that led east towards Menen, and the gate they passed through became the Menin Gate, now a memorial bearing the names of more than fifty thousand soldiers with no known grave. Menen itself, about twenty kilometres from Ypres, sits right on the French border, on the river Leie, which the French call the Lys, and its town hall and belfry, standing on the market square, are part of the UNESCO listing of the belfries of Belgium and France. The belfry, like much of the town, was damaged in the war and rebuilt, and it remains the proud symbol of the town's civic history.
Read the complete Belfort en Stadhuis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 127 km into the recorded legs you reach Belfort en Stadhuis. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai, 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.
Back at Monument aux morts. That is the ride.
Monument aux morts → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai → Belfort en Stadhuis is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Belfort en Stadhuis → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai → Monument aux morts is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.