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.
68 km from Sallaumines to Sallaumines, about 1 h 06 of riding. On the way it passes Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault, Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron and back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
On the morning of 10 March 1906, an explosion tore through the galleries of the Courrières mining company, killing well over a thousand miners. It remains the worst mining disaster in European history. Most of the victims came from the towns of Méricourt, Sallaumines and Billy-Montigny, and many were buried in a mass grave nearby. Twenty days after the explosion, thirteen survivors emerged from the darkness, having found their way through the ruined galleries, and their story became famous across Europe. The memorials in and around Sallaumines honour the dead and the rescuers, including German miners from Westphalia who came to help.
Read the complete Monument commémoratif de la Catastrophe de write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument commémoratif de la Catastrophe de is where the day begins. Next is Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault.
The flat country between Douai and Lens does not look like much from a motorway, but it holds one of the great industrial landscapes of Europe. For more than two centuries coal was dug from under these fields, and the mining basin of the Nord-Pas de Calais was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape of pits, slag heaps, railway lines and workers' housing. The Fosse Cornuault at Évin-Malmaison is one piece of that vast mosaic, a former colliery site with its associated buildings, set among the brick villages of the eastern part of the basin.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault comes up about 17 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 34 km into the recorded legs you reach Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron. Next is back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault, late in the day. Next is Monument commémoratif de la Catastrophe de.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monument commémoratif de la Catastrophe de write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Monument commémoratif de la Catastrophe de. That is the ride.
Monument commémoratif de la Catastrophe de → Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault → Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de Montigny et du Moucheron → back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault → Monument commémoratif de la Catastrophe de is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.