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.
287 km from Hoeilaart to Hoeilaart, about 4 h 57 of riding. On the way it passes Bois du Cazier, Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat and back through Bois du Cazier. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. Long stretches are under trees.
Imagine a cathedral built entirely of beech trunks, grey and smooth, rising forty metres or more to a roof of leaves, and you have the Sonian Forest at its finest. This great wood on the south-eastern edge of Brussels, the Forêt de Soignes or Zoniënwoud, covers thousands of hectares, and its most remarkable stands, including the Grippensdelle reserve near Hoeilaart, are part of the transnational World Heritage Site of the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of Europe, inscribed in 2017.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle B is where the day begins. Next is Bois du Cazier.
On the morning of 8 August 1956, a fire broke out in the Bois du Cazier coal mine in Marcinelle, near Charleroi, after a mechanical error in the shaft loaded a lift cage with a wagon and cut an oil pipe and electric cables. Smoke filled the galleries within minutes. Two hundred and sixty-two miners died, and only thirteen were rescued. Most of the dead were immigrants, and one hundred and thirty-six of them were Italian, men who had come to Belgium under a 1946 agreement that exchanged Italian labour for Belgian coal. The disaster remains a deep wound in Belgian and Italian memory, and it changed mining safety rules across Europe.
Read the complete Bois du Cazier write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bois du Cazier comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat.
At Condé-sur-l'Escaut, right on the Belgian border, the coal basin of northern France reaches its eastern end, and the old mining site of Chabaud-Latour shows how industry and nature have come to terms. A pit operated here for decades, and today what remains is a landscape of slag heaps, ponds formed by mining subsidence, woods and wetlands, part of the UNESCO site of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 143 km into the recorded legs you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat. Next is back through Bois du Cazier.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bois du Cazier write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bois du Cazier, late in the day. Next is Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle B.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle B write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle B. That is the ride.
Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle B → Bois du Cazier is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bois du Cazier → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat → back through Bois du Cazier is 82 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Bois du Cazier → Sonian Forest - Grippensdelle B is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.