CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
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Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Bruay-la-Buissière it runs 153 km to Bruay-la-Buissière; allow about 2 h 18 of riding. It goes by way of Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de, Terril 140, Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain and back through Terril 140. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
This was once a landscape of pits, headframes and long rows of brick miners' housing, and in 2012 the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin was added to the UNESCO list as a cultural landscape. The stadium or park in the label is part of that story in a quieter way, because company towns like Bruay built sports grounds, brass bands and parks for their workers, and the community life around a pit was as important as the pit itself.
Read the complete Stade Parc write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stade Parc is where the day begins. Next is Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de.
The Grands Bureaux of the mining company at Liévin are the opposite of a pit: a big, solid brick office building where the engineers, accountants and managers ran the underground world from desks. Built in the style of company headquarters across the basin, with generous windows, a formal entrance and a clock, the building announces that coal was a serious business, with a payroll, a hierarchy and a public face. It sits in the town centre, a few hundred metres from the heart of Liévin, and it forms part of the Mining Basin that UNESCO listed in 2012.
Read the complete Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de comes up 27 km in. Next is Terril 140.
Rising out of the flat fields north of Douai, the black, cone-shaped hill of Terril 140 is not a natural feature at all: it is a heap of mining waste, the spoil left over from decades of coal extraction. The mining basin of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, listed by UNESCO in 2012 as a cultural landscape, is studded with hundreds of these terrils, some flat-topped, some pointed, and together with the pitheads, workers' housing and railways they tell the story of an industry that shaped the region for nearly three centuries.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
54 km in you reach Terril 140. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
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, about halfway. Next is back through Terril 140.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 140 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 140 sits at 107 km, about halfway. Next is back through Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de comes up 134 km in. Next is Stade Parc.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stade Parc write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stade Parc closes the day.
Stade Parc → Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de → Terril 140 is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 140 → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → back through Terril 140 is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 140 → back through Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Grands Bureaux de la Société Houillère de → Stade Parc is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.