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.
From Vieux-Condé it runs 93 km to Vieux-Condé; allow about 1 h 34 of riding. On the way it passes Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple, Cités de Beaurepaire and back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Black hills on a flat land. That is the image most people keep of the Nord-Pas de Calais coal basin, a band of former mining country stretching about 120 kilometres from the Belgian border westward towards Béthune, where for nearly three centuries coal was dug from deep underground. The slag heaps, the terrils, rise like pyramids above the towns, and the mining villages, the cités, line the streets in rows of brick houses. In 2012 the basin was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognised as a living cultural landscape, with over three hundred elements protected.
Read the complete Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin is where the day begins. Next is Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple.
A steel tower with a big wheel at the top: once you have seen one headframe, you start to spot them all across the north of France, but each one marks a place where men went down into the dark. The headframe of the Fosse Dutemple, between Valenciennes and Petite-Forêt, is one of the survivors, kept as part of the UNESCO-listed Nord-Pas de Calais mining basin. Under it, cages once dropped miners hundreds of metres to the coal seams; now it stands as a monument, its pulleys still against the sky.
Read the complete Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple comes up about 20 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cités de Beaurepaire.
Somain exists because of the railway. Several lines meet here, and the town grew up around the station, which still has the busy feel of a junction. The Cités de Beaurepaire were built by the Aniche mining company, one of the great concerns of the northern coalfield, and they show how a company could shape a landscape: neat brick rows, small squares, a few shared buildings, and gardens laid out to a plan. A local will tell you who lived in which house and which families still do; an outsider notices the symmetry first, and then the small signs of individuality, a painted door, a trellis, a satellite dish pointing the wrong way.
Read the complete Cités de Beaurepaire write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 45 km into the recorded legs you reach Cités de Beaurepaire. Next is back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple, late in the day. Next is Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin. That is the ride.
Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin → Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple → Cités de Beaurepaire is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de Beaurepaire → back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chevalement de la fosse Dutemple → Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.