Carrefour de l'Arbre
Cobbled sector · Roubaix
Checked
part of: The pavé of Paris–Roubaix
Carrefour de l'Arbre is a 2.0 km cobbled sector in Roubaix, essentially level (+7 m over its full length). It is cobbled throughout.
The last five-star sector of Paris-Roubaix, 2,100 metres ending at the restaurant on the crossroads, and the race's favourite place to be decided: Kuiper in 1983, Madiot in 1985 and 1991, Cancellara in 2006 and O'Grady in 2007 all went clear on these stones and rode alone to the velodrome. The race has used this road since 1958, when the organisers went prospecting the Pévèle for cobbles that had not yet been tarmacked.
2.0 km · level · +7 m · 2 km cobbled · 48 → 50 m
Route and surface read from OpenStreetMap, elevation from satellite data — approximate.
Download GPX ↓Navigate to the start ↗
Elevation is drawn to the same scale on every segment, so a level sector looks level. The bands beneath the line are surface, not gradient.
History
Paris-Roubaix first used this road in 1958, when the race's original cobbles were disappearing under asphalt and its organisers went prospecting for survivors across the Pévèle, and it has been on the course systematically since 1980. The pavé crosses open farmland past the Domaine de Luchin, which gives the sector its official name, Pavé de Luchin, and it ends at the crossroads and its restaurant that supply the name everyone actually uses. Hennie Kuiper attacked here to win in 1983 and Marc Madiot did the same in 1985 and again in 1991, while Fabian Cancellara in 2006 and Stuart O'Grady in 2007 both went clear on these stones and rode alone to the Roubaix velodrome. It settles the race by misfortune as often as by attack: Thor Hushovd crashed on it in 2009 and Tom Boonen rode away to win, and in 2023 John Degenkolb crashed and Wout van Aert punctured here, leaving the road to Mathieu van der Poel and his first Roubaix. Peter Sagan came off it in front in 2014 and still lost. The sector carries five stars and is the last of that rating on the course, and the stones survive because people work on them: Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix, founded in 1977 by Jean-Claude Vallaeys to talk communes out of tarmacking their pavé, go over the sector before and after each race, students from the lycée horticole de Raismes have spent two weeks a year relaying the race's cobbles since 2002, and after the 2024 edition the volunteers found stones prised out of the Carrefour and carried off.
What it’s like to ride
Carrefour de l'Arbre is 2,100 m of five-star pavé between Camphin-en-Pévèle and Gruson, and the entry is the worst of it: the pavé de Luchin turns left then right over stones the French reconnaissance write-ups call filthy and sharp-edged, and when it straightens out past the Domaine de Luchin it gets more irregular still. The camber is extreme, roughly 30 cm higher down the middle than at either edge, enough to ground a low car, and the crown carries the least broken stones, so that is the line: middle of the road, chosen early, pedalling the whole way. It does not always hold, because the ridge can be worn down to a sharp spine of grass and dirt, and the ploughed earth verge on the left is far riskier for punctures than the pavé is. After the tarmac crossing, the second half, the pavé Jean-Marie Leblanc, is more rideable and still ugly, on a slight rise that arrives when there is nothing left, ending at the restaurant on the crossroads itself; Gruson, straight after, feels clean by comparison. You reach it off three kilometres of tarmac from Camphin with the last kilometre badly exposed, and a headwind here is what makes it hard to hold the front. Wet, the stones go slick and the edges fill with puddles and mud, and in 2021 the race came through the sector in deep mud. It hurts, and it is still rideable: a public road any day of the year, on the Paris-Roubaix Challenge route, and a journalist got over it upright at a bit over 15 km/h on 35 mm tyres run slightly soft, weight back on the saddle, hands flat and loose on the bars, carrying as much speed into it as she could.
Surface and what to expect
Cobbled throughout.
- Cobbleskm 0.0–2.0
More to ride in Roubaix
Common questions
- How long is Carrefour de l'Arbre?
- Carrefour de l'Arbre is a 2.0 km cobbled sector in Roubaix, essentially level (+7 m over its full length). It is cobbled throughout.
- What is the surface like on Carrefour de l'Arbre?
- Carrefour de l'Arbre is cobbled throughout, measured from OpenStreetMap surface tags along the route.
- Is Carrefour de l'Arbre flat?
- Effectively, yes. It gains 7 m across 2.0 km — an average of 0.1%.