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 150 km round trip from Haillicourt - roughly 2 h 25 in the saddle. The stops in between: Monument Emile Basly, Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai, Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain and back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. 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.
Monument Emile Basly comes up about 24 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 48 km into the recorded legs you reach Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai. Next is Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain.
Escaudain sits in the old heartland of the Compagnie des mines d'Anzin, the oldest and once the most powerful of the coal companies in northern France, and the landscape around it is pure mining country: rows of brick terraces, spoil heaps, old railway embankments and the occasional headframe standing like a monument. This is the Valenciennes end of the coalfield, close to the Belgian border, and it was here that coal mining in the north began in the eighteenth century. The town and its surroundings form one of the many components of the Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, which UNESCO inscribed in 2012 as an evolving cultural landscape.
Read the complete Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain, about halfway. Next is back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
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.
back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai sits at 102 km, 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 comes up about 126 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
Terrils Jumeaux 28 closes the day.
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 → Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Paysage et ensemble miniers d’Escaudain → back through Beffroi de l’Hôtel de Ville de Douai is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through 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 → Terrils Jumeaux 28 is 25 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.