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 248 km round trip from Bully-les-Mines - roughly 4 h 17 in the saddle. On the way it passes Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes and back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Bully-les-Mines lies just below the long ridge of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, where the great French military cemetery overlooks the coalfield, and the juxtaposition says something about this part of France. The land around is a battlefield and a mining basin at the same time. In 1914 and 1915 the front line ran through here, and the villages were shattered. After the war they were rebuilt, and the new mining estates, the cités de la Victoire and des Arbres, took names that spoke of recovery.
Read the complete Monument du soldat Marche write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Monument du soldat Marche is where the day begins. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Escaudain sits in the old heartland of the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin, the oldest and once the most powerful of the coal companies in northern France, and the landscape around it is pure mining country: rows of brick terraces, spoil heaps, old railway embankments and the occasional headframe standing like a monument. This is the Valenciennes end of the coalfield, close to the Belgian border, and it was here that coal mining in the north began in the eighteenth century. The town and its surroundings form one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, which UNESCO inscribed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes.
Beneath the fields south-east of Mons lies a honeycomb of shafts and galleries dug by Neolithic farmers more than six thousand years ago. They were after flint, the essential raw material for axes and tools, and they dug shafts up to fifteen metres deep through the chalk to reach the best seams, using antler picks and stone hammers. The mines at Spiennes, covering more than a hundred hectares, are the largest and earliest in north-western Europe, and they were inscribed by UNESCO in 2000. An interpretation centre allows visitors to descend into one of the shafts, and on the surface the ground is still scattered with flint flakes.
Read the complete Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 124 km into the recorded legs you reach Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, late in the day. Next is Monument du soldat Marche.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monument du soldat Marche write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Monument du soldat Marche. That is the ride.
Monument du soldat Marche → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → Monument du soldat Marche is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.