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 Escaudain it runs 305 km to Escaudain; allow about 4 h 44 of riding. The stops in between: Cité Crombez, Cité des Soeurs, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la and Beffroi de Bergues. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Cité Crombez.
Cité Crombez is a miners' settlement at Noyelles-Godault, on the eastern edge of Hénin-Beaumont, in the heart of the old coal basin between Lens and Douai. Built by the mining company to house its workers, it has the classic layout of brick houses, gardens and straight streets, and it is part of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage site. Today it is a quiet residential area, surrounded by shopping centres, motorways and the remains of heavy industry.
Read the complete Cité Crombez write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cité Crombez comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is Cité des Soeurs.
At the western edge of the coalfield, where the plain of the mining basin starts to buckle into the chalk hills of Artois, the town of Barlin grew up around its pits. The Cité des Soeurs is one of its housing estates, rows of brick miners' houses with gardens, and Terril 244, a slag heap now furred with trees, stands nearby like a man-made hill. Both belong to the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site, which covers more than a hundred kilometres of coal country from the Belgian border westwards.
Read the complete Cité des Soeurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 67 km into the recorded legs you reach Cité des Soeurs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-.
Aire-sur-la-Lys is the kind of small French town that rewards a slow walk with no plan. Its belfry rises from the eighteenth-century town hall on the Grand Place, an elegant classical building topped by a tall tower with a lantern and a carillon, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France. Across the square stands the Bailliage, a richly decorated Renaissance building from around 1600, with arches, carved figures and a little loggia, which once housed the guard and the town's officials. A few streets away, the great collegiate church of Saint-Pierre, built in a flamboyant Gothic style, rises above the rooftops.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-, about halfway. Next is Beffroi de Bergues.
Bergues found a new kind of fame in 2008, when the comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, filmed here, became one of the most successful French films of all time, and suddenly the whole country wanted to see the town where a postman from the south is exiled to the cold north and ends up falling in love with it. The film's best-known scenes include the belfry, from which the hero rings the carillon, and the town still welcomes visitors who come in search of the locations. But Bergues was a proud place long before cinema arrived. It is a small fortified town in French Flanders, surrounded by ramparts and canals, with fortifications improved by Vauban in the seventeenth century.
Read the complete Beffroi de Bergues write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Bergues sits at 156 km, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la-.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- comes up about 204 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Cité des Soeurs.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité des Soeurs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 239 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Cité des Soeurs. Next is back through Cité Crombez.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Cité Crombez write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Cité Crombez, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 305 km.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → Cité Crombez is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité Crombez → Cité des Soeurs is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cité des Soeurs → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- → Beffroi de Bergues is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Bergues → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Aire-sur-la- → back through Cité des Soeurs is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité des Soeurs → back through Cité Crombez is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Cité Crombez → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.