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.
From Oudenaarde it runs 346 km to Oudenaarde; allow about 5 h 58 of riding. It goes by way of Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent, Béguinage de Bruges, Stadhuis met Belfort and Beffroi de Bergues. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
Oudenaarde's town hall looks like something carved from lace. Built in the early sixteenth century in the late Gothic style, it has a facade covered with pointed arches, niches and statues, and a slender belfry topped with a gilded crown on which stands a small knight known locally as Hanske de Krijger, Little John the Warrior. The building is one of the finest of its kind in Flanders, and it is listed by UNESCO among the belfries of Belgium and France. Inside, there are displays of the tapestries for which Oudenaarde was famous across Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially its verdures, woven scenes of forests and greenery.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stadhuis met Belfort is where the day begins. Next is Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent.
The Great Béguinage of Sint-Amandsberg looks like a small walled town of its own, tucked into a residential suburb just east of the centre of Ghent. When the city expanded in the 1870s and the old béguinage of St Elisabeth was in the way, the beguines, lay religious women who lived in community without taking permanent vows, moved here to a new complex of neo-Gothic houses, convents and a church, all laid out around streets, squares and gardens behind a wall and gate. The move was funded by the Duke of Arenberg, and the whole place was finished in just a few years. It is one of the thirteen Flemish Béguinages on the UNESCO list since 1998, and although the beguines are gone, the houses are still lived in, and the atmosphere is calm and quiet.
Read the complete Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent comes up about 35 km into the recorded legs. Next is Béguinage de Bruges.
The Princely Beguinage of Bruges, Ten Wijngaerde, is the sort of place that makes people lower their voices without being asked. White-washed houses surround a grassy courtyard planted with old trees, and in spring thousands of daffodils bloom under them. A beguinage was a community where lay women lived a religious life without taking full vows, and Flanders had many of them from the thirteenth century. This one was founded around 1245 under Margaret of Constantinople, Countess of Flanders, and the UNESCO listing of Flemish Beguinages covers it, along with Diest and others.
Read the complete Béguinage de Bruges write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 89 km into the recorded legs you reach Béguinage de Bruges. Next is Stadhuis met Belfort.
Diksmuide was almost wiped from the map in the First World War. The town stood right on the front line along the Yser, and from 1914 to 1918 it was pounded into rubble, along with its town hall, belfry and church. In October 1914, the Belgian army halted the German advance by opening the sluices at Nieuwpoort and flooding the low-lying plain, creating a watery barrier that held for four years. After the war, the town was rebuilt in the old style, with the town hall and belfry carefully reconstructed on the market square, and the belfry is now part of the UNESCO listing of the belfries of Belgium and France.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Stadhuis met Belfort, about halfway. Next is Beffroi de Bergues.
Bergues found a new kind of fame in 2008, when the comedy Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, filmed here, became one of the most successful French films of all time, and suddenly the whole country wanted to see the town where a postman from the south is exiled to the cold north and ends up falling in love with it. The film's best-known scenes include the belfry, from which the hero rings the carillon, and the town still welcomes visitors who come in search of the locations. But Bergues was a proud place long before cinema arrived. It is a small fortified town in French Flanders, surrounded by ramparts and canals, with fortifications improved by Vauban in the seventeenth century.
Read the complete Beffroi de Bergues write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de Bergues sits at 173 km, about halfway. Next is back through Stadhuis met Belfort.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Stadhuis met Belfort comes up about 215 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Béguinage de Bruges.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Béguinage de Bruges write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 257 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Béguinage de Bruges. Next is back through Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent, late in the day.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Stadhuis met Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 346 km.
Stadhuis met Belfort → Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent → Béguinage de Bruges is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Béguinage de Bruges → Stadhuis met Belfort is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Stadhuis met Belfort → Beffroi de Bergues is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de Bergues → back through Stadhuis met Belfort is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Stadhuis met Belfort → back through Béguinage de Bruges is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Béguinage de Bruges → back through Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Béguinage de Sint-Amandsberg / Gent → Stadhuis met Belfort is 35 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.