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.
A 177 km round trip from Vendin-le-Vieil - roughly 3 h 22 in the saddle. On the way it passes Beffroi de Béthune, Terril 34, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin and back through Terril 34. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Flat country hides its stories well, and the strip of land around Vendin-le-Vieil, Pont-à-Vendin and Annay looks at first like any other piece of French Flanders suburbia: rows of brick houses, a canal, a few fields, a tangle of roads. Look again and the pattern reveals itself. The terraced streets are company housing, laid out by mining firms for their workers, and the low hills on the horizon are not hills at all but spoil heaps from the pits that once ran under this ground. The whole Nord-Pas de Calais coal basin was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a living cultural landscape, and the area around Auchy-les-Mines and its neighbours is part of that long chain of pits, cités and terrils stretching across the north of France.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de Béthune.
The belfry of Béthune has been standing in the middle of the Grand Place since the fourteenth century, and it has survived more than most of the buildings around it. In 1918 the town centre was almost completely destroyed by German shelling, and the square was rebuilt in the 1920s in a mix of Flemish and Art Deco styles, with tall, ornate façades in brick and stone around the old tower. The belfry, a symbol of the town's ancient freedoms, is part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France, and climbing its stairs gives a fine view over the rooftops and the flat land around.
Read the complete Beffroi de Béthune write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Béthune comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Terril 34.
A terril is a slag heap, a mountain of waste rock dumped beside a coal mine, and in the flat land of northern France these man-made hills are the closest thing to relief for miles around. Terril 34 is one of hundreds that dot the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, a UNESCO site since 2012, which recognises not only the heaps but also the pithead frames, miners' housing estates, schools, churches and railway lines that made up the landscape of coal mining in the region for nearly three centuries. This one sits near Norrent-Fontes and Lillers, at the western end of the basin, where it meets the chalk hills of Artois.
Read the complete Terril 34 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 57 km into the recorded legs you reach Terril 34. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin.
Hesdin is a small market town in the green valley of the Canche, in the Pas-de-Calais, and it owes its existence to an act of destruction. The original town, a few kilometres upstream, was razed in 1553 by the forces of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and a new fortified town was built here the following year as a strongpoint on the frontier between France and the Habsburg Netherlands. The grid of streets and the large market square still follow that plan. On the square stands the town hall, a former palace of the Habsburg governors, with a beautifully carved Renaissance balcony from which proclamations were read, and its belfry is part of the UNESCO list of belfries in Belgium and France.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin, about halfway. Next is back through Terril 34.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 34 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 34 sits at 124 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de Béthune.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de Béthune write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de Béthune comes up about 152 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi closes the day.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi → Beffroi de Béthune is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Béthune → Terril 34 is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 34 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Hesdin → back through Terril 34 is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 34 → back through Beffroi de Béthune is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de Béthune → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.