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.
A 138 km round trip from Norrent-Fontes - roughly 2 h 28 in the saddle. On the way it passes Terrils Jumeaux 28, Monument Emile Basly, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai and back through Monument Emile Basly. The line favours views over speed.
A terril is a slag heap, a mountain of waste rock dumped beside a coal mine, and in the flat land of northern France these man-made hills are the closest thing to relief for miles around. Terril 34 is one of hundreds that dot the Nord-Pas-de-Calais Mining Basin, a UNESCO site since 2012, which recognises not only the heaps but also the pithead frames, miners' housing estates, schools, churches and railway lines that made up the landscape of coal mining in the region for nearly three centuries. This one sits near Norrent-Fontes and Lillers, at the western end of the basin, where it meets the chalk hills of Artois.
Read the complete Terril 34 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 34 is where the day begins. Next is Terrils Jumeaux 28.
Two near-perfect black cones rise from the farmland between Ruitz, Maisnil-lès-Ruitz and Haillicourt, and once you have spotted them you will keep seeing them for miles. These twin terrils, the spoil heaps of former coal pits, are among the tallest in the Nord-Pas de Calais basin and have become something of a regional emblem. They look volcanic, which in a way they are: shale and waste rock tipped there for decades by the mining companies, slowly settling into steep, smooth pyramids that turn purple-grey in rain and almost silver in bright sun.
Read the complete Terrils Jumeaux 28 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terrils Jumeaux 28 comes up about 21 km into the recorded legs. Next is Monument Emile Basly.
Émile Basly was a miner who became a union leader, a deputy and for a long time the mayor of Lens, and his monument stands in the town as a salute to the people who worked underground. He led the great strike of 1884 at Anzin, which inspired Zola's Germinal, and later rose to national politics as a socialist. In Lens, a town of over thirty-eight thousand people at the heart of the Pas-de-Calais coalfield, he remains a local hero. The town was razed in the First World War and rebuilt in the 1920s, so much of the centre has the brick-and-concrete look of that rebuilding.
Read the complete Monument Emile Basly write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 45 km into the recorded legs you reach Monument Emile Basly. Next is Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai.
The belfry of Douai rises above the town hall like a stone exclamation mark, a tall, square tower with a corner turret and a gilded lion at the top. Belfries were the symbols of medieval towns in Flanders and northern France, built to show that a town had won its freedoms, and to hold the bell that called citizens to meet, fight or put out fires. Douai's was begun in the fourteenth century and finished in the fifteenth, and it is one of the group of belfries of Belgium and France that UNESCO lists together.
Read the complete Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai, about halfway. Next is back through Monument Emile Basly.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Monument Emile Basly write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Monument Emile Basly sits at 101 km, about halfway. Next is back through Terrils Jumeaux 28.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terrils Jumeaux 28 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Terrils Jumeaux 28 comes up about 117 km into the recorded legs. Next is Terril 34.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Terril 34 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Terril 34 closes the day.
Terril 34 → Terrils Jumeaux 28 is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Terrils Jumeaux 28 → Monument Emile Basly is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Monument Emile Basly → Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai is 24 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai → back through Monument Emile Basly is 23 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Monument Emile Basly → back through Terrils Jumeaux 28 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Terrils Jumeaux 28 → Terril 34 is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.