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 Auchel it runs 160 km to Auchel; allow about 2 h 44 of riding. The stops in between: Terril 49, Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt, Cités de Guesnain and back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Auchel lies on the western rim of the coalfield, where the black seams run out against the chalk hills of the Artois, and Terril 14 rises above the town and its neighbour Marles-les-Mines as a long, dark ridge softened by birch and grass. The heap is built of shale and waste rock brought up from the pits of the old company that worked this corner of the basin, and like many of the terrils, it has been left to nature since mining ended. Its slopes are now home to plants that love warm, dry ground, and the summit offers a view over the rooftops of the mining towns toward the green hills to the west. It belongs to the vast mining landscape listed by UNESCO in 2012.
Read the complete Terril 14 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 14 is where the day begins. Next is Terril 49.
Terril 49 rises above the fields between Vermelles, Mazingarbe and Noyelles-lès-Vermelles, one of the dozens of spoil heaps that punctuate the landscape of the Gohelle. Like many of them, it has gone green, with trees and scrub covering slopes once black and bare, and it has become a refuge for wildlife in a landscape of intensive farming and urban sprawl. Lizards, rare insects and birds of prey thrive on the warm, dry slopes of the terrils, which retain heat like stone.
Read the complete Terril 49 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 49 comes up 25 km in. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt.
Libercourt is a young town by French standards. It grew in the early twentieth century around a coal company's pits and a railway line, on land that had been farm and marsh, and the planners laid it out from scratch, with straight streets, a station and cités of brick cottages in tidy rows. Many of the miners who filled them came from Poland, recruited in large numbers between the wars, and Polish names, church services and recipes marked the mining villages of the north for generations.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
50 km in you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt. Next is Cités de Guesnain.
A kilometre down the road from the workers' housing of Guesnain stands the best place in France to understand what coal really meant. The Centre Historique Minier at Lewarde occupies the old Delloye pit, which closed in 1971, and it walks you through the whole life of a mine: the lamp room, the showers where miners hung their clothes on chains up to the ceiling, the stables for the pit ponies, and a reconstructed gallery underground where you hear the noise of the picks and the creak of the props. Come here first, and every terrace and terril you pass afterwards will make more sense.
Read the complete Cités de Guesnain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Cités de Guesnain, about halfway. Next is back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt sits at 99 km, about halfway. Next is back through Terril 49.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 49 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terril 49 comes up 124 km in. Next is Terril 14.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 14 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 14 closes the day.
Terril 14 → Terril 49 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terril 49 → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt → Cités de Guesnain is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Cités de Guesnain → back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Paysage et ensemble miniers de Libercourt → back through Terril 49 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terril 49 → Terril 14 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.