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.
248 km from Hoeilaart to Hoeilaart, about 4 h 17 of riding. On the way it passes Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche, Château Dampierre and back through Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. Much of it runs through woodland.
Brussels has a cathedral of trees. The Sonian Forest, or Zoniënwoud, covers about four and a half thousand hectares on the south-eastern edge of the city, and most of it is beech, tall grey-barked trunks that rise like columns, with a canopy so dense that the forest floor under it is open and dim. Some trees are two centuries old, and the pattern of straight, evenly spaced trunks comes from the way the forest was managed in the eighteenth century under Austrian rule, when foresters planted the stands in a deliberate style. Parts of the forest were listed by UNESCO in 2021 as part of the ancient beech forests of Europe.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche.
Once a year, on the Tuesday before Lent, the little town of Binche in Belgian Hainaut goes completely mad. The Gilles, men dressed in costumes decorated with heraldic lions, crowns and stars, wearing wooden clogs, padded humps and, in the afternoon, enormous hats of ostrich feathers, dance through the streets to the beat of drums from dawn until late at night, throwing oranges into the crowd. The carnival of Binche is one of the oldest and most famous in Europe and is listed by UNESCO as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. If you are hit by an orange, it is considered a sign of luck, and throwing it back is not done.
Read the complete Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Château Dampierre.
Anzin, on the northern edge of Valenciennes, is where coal mining in northern France began on an industrial scale. In the eighteenth century, the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin became one of the largest companies in France, and its mines, workers' housing, slag heaps and buildings shaped the landscape of the region. Château Dampierre is one of the buildings linked to that history, and it is part of the UNESCO listing of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, inscribed in 2012, which preserves more than a hundred sites across a vast area: pits, headframes, miners' cités, churches, schools and the great black spoil heaps known as terrils. The big miners' strike at Anzin in 1884 helped inspire Émile Zola's novel Germinal.
Read the complete Château Dampierre write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 124 km into the recorded legs you reach Château Dampierre. Next is back through Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche, late in the day. Next is Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A. That is the ride.
Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A → Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche → Château Dampierre is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Château Dampierre → back through Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l'Hôtel de Ville de Binche → Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle A is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.