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.
A 156 km round trip from Roeselare - roughly 2 h 41 in the saddle. On the way it passes Belfort met Lakenhal, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières, Fosse n°5 and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
The ride follows Stadhuis → Belfort met Lakenhal for 27 km.
Bruges is half an hour north, and the two make a good pairing, but Roeselare deserves to be taken on its own terms: a working town of some fifty-six thousand people, built on textiles, food processing and trade, with a town hall on its market square that anchors the centre. Like most Flemish towns, Roeselare grew around a market and a civic building that announced the burghers' independence from lords and bishops, and the tradition of the town hall as the symbol of local self-government is still very much alive here.
Read the complete Stadhuis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stadhuis is where the day begins. Next is Belfort met Lakenhal.
Every evening at eight o'clock, traffic stops under the Menin Gate in Ieper and buglers of the local fire brigade play the Last Post for the soldiers of the British Empire who died in the Ypres Salient and have no known grave. The ceremony has been held almost every evening since 1928, interrupted only during the German occupation in the Second World War. Walk from the gate to the Grote Markt and you come to the Cloth Hall and its belfry, a huge Gothic building that dominated medieval Flanders, when Ypres was one of the great cloth towns of Europe.
Read the complete Belfort met Lakenhal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Belfort met Lakenhal comes up about 27 km into the recorded legs. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières.
Armentières is a textile town on the river Lys, right on the Belgian border, a quarter of an hour west of Lille. Its name is familiar to many English speakers from the bawdy marching song of the First World War, Mademoiselle from Armentières, which British soldiers sang on their way to the front lines nearby. The town paid a terrible price for being so close to that front: it was shelled, occupied and largely destroyed by 1918. The town hall and its belfry were rebuilt in the 1920s and 1930s in a confident Flemish style, and the tower now belongs to the UNESCO group of belfries of Belgium and France.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 52 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières. Next is Fosse n°5.
Douvrin, Billy-Berclau and Wingles form a little triangle of brick towns at the northern edge of the Lens coalfield, and the old pit known as Fosse n°5 sits among them. It is not a famous site and does not need to be: its value lies in being one of the many pieces that make up the mining landscape UNESCO listed in 2012, a network of pits, housing estates, slag heaps, railways and public buildings stretching for over a hundred kilometres across the north of France. Seen from the saddle, the area is a patchwork of cités, fields, canals and newer industrial estates, with the occasional terril breaking the skyline.
Read the complete Fosse n°5 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fosse n°5, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières sits at 104 km, about halfway. Next is back through Belfort met Lakenhal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Belfort met Lakenhal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Belfort met Lakenhal comes up about 131 km into the recorded legs. Next is Stadhuis.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stadhuis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stadhuis closes the day.
Stadhuis → Belfort met Lakenhal is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Belfort met Lakenhal → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières → Fosse n°5 is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fosse n°5 → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Armentières → back through Belfort met Lakenhal is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Belfort met Lakenhal → Stadhuis is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.