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.
309 km from Waterloo to Waterloo, about 5 h 20 of riding. It goes by way of Beffroi de Gembloux, Bois du Cazier, Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes and Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. Long stretches are under trees.
The beeches in the Sonian Forest grow so tall and straight that people call it the cathedral forest, and once you stand under them on a misty autumn morning the name stops sounding like tourist talk. This great woodland on the southeastern edge of Brussels covers thousands of hectares, and most of the famous columns of grey trunks were planted in the late eighteenth century, when the Austrian Habsburgs ruled these lands and their foresters reshaped the old wood. A few patches, including the Tict reserve near La Hulpe and Waterloo, are left to grow wild with no felling at all, and they form part of the UNESCO listing for the ancient and primeval beech forests of Europe, a chain of reserves stretching across the continent.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de Gembloux.
Gembloux grew up around a Benedictine abbey founded in the tenth century, and for most of its history the monks ran the show. The abbey buildings, rebuilt in a grand classical style in the eighteenth century, now house a university faculty of agricultural sciences, fitting for a town surrounded by some of the richest farmland in Belgium. The belfry, a solid tower that was once part of a church and later became the town's civic symbol, stands in the centre and is part of the UNESCO listing of belfries of Belgium and France. Climbing it gives views over the rooftops and across the open fields of the Hesbaye.
Read the complete Beffroi de Gembloux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Gembloux comes up about 36 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 73 km into the recorded legs you reach Bois du Cazier. Next is Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes.
Beneath the fields south-east of Mons lies a honeycomb of shafts and galleries dug by Neolithic farmers more than six thousand years ago. They were after flint, the essential raw material for axes and tools, and they dug shafts up to fifteen metres deep through the chalk to reach the best seams, using antler picks and stone hammers. The mines at Spiennes, covering more than a hundred hectares, are the largest and earliest in north-western Europe, and they were inscribed by UNESCO in 2000. An interpretation centre allows visitors to descend into one of the shafts, and on the surface the ground is still scattered with flint flakes.
Read the complete Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes, about halfway. 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.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat sits at 155 km, about halfway. Next is back through Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes comes up about 193 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 237 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Bois du Cazier. Next is back through Beffroi de Gembloux.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de Gembloux write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de Gembloux, late in the day. Next is Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 309 km.
Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict → Beffroi de Gembloux is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Gembloux → Bois du Cazier is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bois du Cazier → Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Chabaud-Lat → back through Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes is 38 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Neolithic Flint Mines at Spiennes → back through Bois du Cazier is 44 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bois du Cazier → back through Beffroi de Gembloux is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de Gembloux → Sonian Forest - Réserve forestière du Tict is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.