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 Auchel it runs 254 km to Auchel; allow about 4 h 23 of riding. It goes by way of Ensemble minier de la Belleforière, Het Belfort of Halletoren and back through Ensemble minier de la Belleforière. It crosses from France into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
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 Ensemble minier de la Belleforière.
Roost-Warendin, Waziers and Râches sit just north of Douai, where the old Scarpe floodplain met the coal seams, and the Belleforière mining ensemble is one of the clusters that shows how a pit site was organised. Shafts, buildings, workers' housing and spoil heaps were laid out together, with the railway linking them all, and in a few places the ensemble survives well enough that you can read it on the ground. Part of the regional mining landscape listed by UNESCO in 2012, it is a good example of how coal companies planned whole villages around their extraction.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la Belleforière write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ensemble minier de la Belleforière comes up about 62 km into the recorded legs. Next is Het Belfort of Halletoren.
On the Grote Markt of Kortrijk a tower stands alone in the middle of the square, as if the building it belonged to had wandered off. In a sense it did. The Belfort, or Halletoren, was once part of the cloth hall, the trading heart of a medieval textile town, and when the hall disappeared the tower stayed. It is one of the belfries of Belgium and France on the UNESCO list, and it has a pair of local celebrities at the top: two gilded figures, Manten and Kalle, who strike the hours on the bell. Kortrijk people are fond of them, and you will see their likenesses on all sorts of souvenirs.
Read the complete Het Belfort of Halletoren write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 127 km into the recorded legs you reach Het Belfort of Halletoren. Next is back through Ensemble minier de la Belleforière.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ensemble minier de la Belleforière write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ensemble minier de la Belleforière, late in the day. 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.
Back at Terril 14. That is the ride.
Terril 14 → Ensemble minier de la Belleforière is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ensemble minier de la Belleforière → Het Belfort of Halletoren is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Het Belfort of Halletoren → back through Ensemble minier de la Belleforière is 65 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Ensemble minier de la Belleforière → Terril 14 is 62 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.