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.
187 km from Libercourt to Libercourt, about 2 h 47 of riding. It goes by way of Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras, Terrils Jumeaux 28 and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. The line favours views over speed.
Libercourt is a young town by French standards. It grew in the early twentieth century around a coal company's pits and a railway line, on land that had been farm and marsh, and the planners laid it out from scratch, with straight streets, a station and cités of brick cottages in tidy rows. Many of the miners who filled them came from Poland, recruited in large numbers between the wars, and Polish names, church services and recipes marked the mining villages of the north for generations.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt is where the day begins. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi.
Take any road across the Artois plain around Grenay and you will see the shape of the mining basin on the skyline: conical slag heaps, called terrils, rising out of the farmland and cités, and tall brick pit-head buildings that once housed the winding gear. This area lies between Lens and Béthune, in a district called the Gohelle, and it was mined intensively from the nineteenth century until the last pit closed in 1990. The Grenay and Mazingarbe sites are part of the UNESCO-listed mining basin, which recognises both the buildings and the landscape, and the way company housing, railways and spoil heaps shaped one another.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi comes up about 30 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Arras has two great squares, the Grand-Place and the Place des Héros, surrounded by tall Flemish-baroque houses with curved gables and arcades, and towering above them is the belfry of the town hall, over seventy metres high. It looks medieval, but most of it is a careful reconstruction: Arras was devastated by German artillery during the First World War, when the front line ran just east of the town for years, and the belfry was destroyed in 1914. After the war, the people of Arras rebuilt it, along with the squares, and today it is one of the belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 57 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras. Next is Terrils Jumeaux 28.
Two near-perfect black cones rise from the farmland between Ruitz, Maisnil-lès-Ruitz and Haillicourt, and once you have spotted them you will keep seeing them for miles. These twin terrils, the spoil heaps of former coal pits, are among the tallest in the Nord-Pas de Calais basin and have become something of a regional emblem. They look volcanic, which in a way they are: shale and waste rock tipped there for decades by the mining companies, slowly settling into steep, smooth pyramids that turn purple-grey in rain and almost silver in bright sun.
Read the complete Terrils Jumeaux 28 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terrils Jumeaux 28, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras sits at 109 km, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi comes up about 157 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt closes the day.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Terrils Jumeaux 28 is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terrils Jumeaux 28 → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Grenay-Mazi → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt is 30 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.