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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Aire-sur-la-Lys it runs 248 km to Aire-sur-la-Lys; allow about 3 h 24 of riding. It goes by way of Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras, Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
A terril is a coal slag heap, and in the old Artois coalfield they punctuate the horizon like unfinished pyramids. This one, numbered 31 in the local inventory of the mining basin, lies on the southern fringe of the field, near Norrent-Fontes and Mametz, where the plain of the Lys starts to tilt against the low hills of Artois. Heaps like this were built up over decades from the waste rock hauled out of the pits, and many are conical, a few are flat-topped and some stretch in long ridges. Left alone, they have turned into oddities of nature, with warm black soil that suits unusual plants, birch scrub, and in summer a surprising number of butterflies.
Read the complete Terril 31 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 31 is where the day begins. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Arras has two great squares, the Grand-Place and the Place des Héros, surrounded by tall Flemish-baroque houses with curved gables and arcades, and towering above them is the belfry of the town hall, over seventy metres high. It looks medieval, but most of it is a careful reconstruction: Arras was devastated by German artillery during the First World War, when the front line ran just east of the town for years, and the belfry was destroyed in 1914. After the war, the people of Arras rebuilt it, along with the squares, and today it is one of the belfries of Belgium and France listed by UNESCO.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras comes up about 59 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are.
Anyone who follows cycling knows the Trouée d'Arenberg, the arrow-straight cobbled lane through the forest near Wallers where Paris-Roubaix often breaks apart. What fewer know is that the lane passes the gate of a colliery, and that the colliery is one of the jewels of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin World Heritage Site. Fosse Arenberg, with its three steel headframes and brick engine houses, closed in 1989, and a few years later Claude Berri filmed his version of Zola's Germinal here, using the pithead and the cités around it as a ready-made nineteenth-century mining town.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 122 km into the recorded legs you reach Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras, late in the day. Next is Terril 31.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 31 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Terril 31. That is the ride.
Terril 31 → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers de Wallers-Are → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras is 66 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville d’Arras → Terril 31 is 59 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.