Gravel is Mine

Gravel is Mine was started by a group of riders from northern France who wanted to show gravel cyclists the old coal-mining basin they call home, and to build a new kind of exploratory cycling tourism around it. Working with the Mission Bassin Minier and local heritage and nature managers, they launched it as a deliberately small, low-cost prototype, with part of each entry going to a fund to save endangered mining heritage.

The territory is the whole point. Routes link slag heaps, the raised embankments that once carried coal wagons, subsidence ponds, pithead sites and the brick housing estates of the mining towns, all part of a landscape listed by UNESCO. The base at the Arenberg mine site in Wallers puts you in the home town of Paris-Roubaix's famous Arenberg cobbles, so expect dust, a few pavés and the Belgian border never far away.

The organisers sum up their approach as gravel without the frills. When a heatwave and a prefectoral ban forced them to cancel the 2026 edition, they kept the community riding with a series of free autumn rides from Arenberg and beyond, and the full weekend is due back in the same spirit.