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 328 km round trip from Dendermonde - roughly 5 h 39 in the saddle. On the way it passes Petit Béguinage de Gent, \Halletoren\ ou Belfort, Belfort en Stadhuis and Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault. It crosses from Belgium into France - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Dendermonde sits where the Dender gives up and pours itself into the Scheldt, and the old town hall on the Grote Markt is the thing you aim for when you roll in. Its belfry is one of the Flemish and Walloon towers grouped together by UNESCO as the Belfries of Belgium and France, and the reason those towers matter is simple: in the medieval Low Countries a belfry was the civic answer to the church spire. It held the town charters, the bell that called the citizens, and the watchman who looked out for fire and for armies. Dendermonde needed the watchman more than most, because a town at a river junction is a town everybody wants, and it was besieged, burned and rebuilt more than once, most brutally in 1914 when German troops set much of it alight.
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 Petit Béguinage de Gent.
Push open a gate off a busy Ghent street and the noise drops away. The Klein Begijnhof, the Small Béguinage, is a walled enclave of whitewashed and brick houses with stepped gables around a green courtyard and a Baroque church. Béguines were lay women who lived in community, devoted to prayer and work but without taking permanent vows, and this béguinage was founded in the thirteenth century. Most of the present buildings date from the seventeenth century. Together with other Flemish béguinages, it is on the UNESCO World Heritage list, and it remains one of the calmest places in the city.
Read the complete Petit Béguinage de Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Petit Béguinage de Gent comes up about 34 km into the recorded legs. Next is \Halletoren\ ou Belfort.
Tielt is a working town in the heart of West Flanders, a place of farmers' markets, textile history and flat roads, and its belfry rises above the market square like a stubborn finger pointing at the clouds. The Halletoren, the hall tower, stands on top of the old cloth hall, the building where merchants once inspected and traded woollen cloth, the source of Flanders' wealth in the Middle Ages. The belfry is one of the group of Belgian and French belfries that UNESCO listed together, symbols of the civic freedom that the cities of Flanders won from their lords, where the town charters were kept and the bells rang to call citizens to arms or to work.
Read the complete \Halletoren\ ou Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 73 km into the recorded legs you reach \Halletoren\ ou Belfort. Next is Belfort en Stadhuis.
British soldiers marching to the front in the First World War left Ypres by the road that led east towards Menen, and the gate they passed through became the Menin Gate, now a memorial bearing the names of more than fifty thousand soldiers with no known grave. Menen itself, about twenty kilometres from Ypres, sits right on the French border, on the river Leie, which the French call the Lys, and its town hall and belfry, standing on the market square, are part of the UNESCO listing of the belfries of Belgium and France. The belfry, like much of the town, was damaged in the war and rebuilt, and it remains the proud symbol of the town's civic history.
Read the complete Belfort en Stadhuis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Belfort en Stadhuis, about halfway. Next is Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault.
The flat country between Douai and Lens does not look like much from a motorway, but it holds one of the great industrial landscapes of Europe. For more than two centuries coal was dug from under these fields, and the mining basin of the Nord-Pas de Calais was listed by UNESCO in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape of pits, slag heaps, railway lines and workers' housing. The Fosse Cornuault at Évin-Malmaison is one piece of that vast mosaic, a former colliery site with its associated buildings, set among the brick villages of the eastern part of the basin.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault sits at 164 km, about halfway. Next is back through Belfort en Stadhuis.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Belfort en Stadhuis write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Belfort en Stadhuis comes up about 217 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through \Halletoren\ ou Belfort.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete \Halletoren\ ou Belfort write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 253 km into the recorded legs you reach back through \Halletoren\ ou Belfort. Next is back through Petit Béguinage de Gent.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Petit Béguinage de Gent write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Petit Béguinage de Gent, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 328 km.
Stadhuis met Belfort → Petit Béguinage de Gent is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Petit Béguinage de Gent → \Halletoren\ ou Belfort is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
\Halletoren\ ou Belfort → Belfort en Stadhuis is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Belfort en Stadhuis → Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ensemble minier de la fosse Cornuault → back through Belfort en Stadhuis is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Belfort en Stadhuis → back through \Halletoren\ ou Belfort is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through \Halletoren\ ou Belfort → back through Petit Béguinage de Gent is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Petit Béguinage de Gent → Stadhuis met Belfort is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.