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 275 km round trip from Vendin-le-Vieil - roughly 4 h 44 in the saddle. The stops in between: Cité Barrois, Cité du Rivage ancienne, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai and Béguinage de Kortrijk. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Speed drops and stays down. Park rather than crawl through. 34 km through ground somebody thought worth listing. The road passes it rather than bypassing it.
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 Cité Barrois.
Rows of red-brick cottages, each with its garden, set along curving streets with trees: the Cité Barrois in Pecquencourt looks almost English, and that is no accident. In the later years of the coal era, the mining companies of northern France built garden cities for their workers, influenced by ideas from across the Channel about healthy housing and green space. This one is part of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an entire landscape of pits, slag heaps, workers' housing, schools, churches and railways spread over more than a hundred kilometres.
Read the complete Cité Barrois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Barrois comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Brick terraced houses, small gardens and a straight street running toward the Escaut: at first glance the Cité du Rivage in Bruay-sur-l'Escaut looks like any working-class neighbourhood in northern France. It is part of something much larger. In 2012, UNESCO listed the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, a landscape of pit villages, headframes, slag heaps and railways stretching over a hundred kilometres, as a monument to three centuries of coal. This cité is one of its many fragments, an early housing development built by the mining companies to keep their workers close to the pits.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 68 km into the recorded legs you reach Cité du Rivage ancienne. Next is Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai.
Five towers. That is what everyone remembers about Tournai's cathedral, and when you first see them rising above the rooftops of this old city on the Scheldt, they seem almost too many for one building. The cathedral of Notre-Dame is one of the great churches of Europe, with a massive Romanesque nave and transept from the twelfth century and a later Gothic choir, tall and light, built in the following century. The combination is a lesson in medieval architecture, and it earned the building a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list. It has been under long restoration after a storm in 1999 damaged the structure, so parts may be covered in scaffolding when you visit.
Read the complete Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai, about halfway. Next is Béguinage de Kortrijk.
Step through a gate off a busy street in the centre of Kortrijk and the noise falls away. The béguinage is a tiny enclosed village of whitewashed houses, cobbled lanes and a small church, founded in the thirteenth century by Countess Joan of Constantinople for the beguines, lay women who lived a religious life without taking full vows. It is one of the Flemish béguinages that UNESCO listed together in 1998, and although it is small, it has a rare atmosphere of calm. A statue of the countess stands at the entrance.
Read the complete Béguinage de Kortrijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Béguinage de Kortrijk sits at 138 km, about halfway. Next is back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai comes up about 172 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cité du Rivage ancienne.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité du Rivage ancienne write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 206 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cité du Rivage ancienne. Next is back through Cité Barrois.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Barrois write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité Barrois, late in the day. 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.
The route ends here after 275 km.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi → Cité Barrois is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité Barrois → Cité du Rivage ancienne is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité du Rivage ancienne → Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai → Béguinage de Kortrijk is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Béguinage de Kortrijk → back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Notre-Dame Cathedral in Tournai → back through Cité du Rivage ancienne is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité du Rivage ancienne → back through Cité Barrois is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité Barrois → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Auchy-les-Mi is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.