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Video length: 2 min.
An artificial hill made of mining residues, the Terril is today a natural setting that is home to rare flora and fauna for the region.
The sun is barely rising on the twins of Loos-en-Gohelle (Pas-de-Calais). Slowly, nature is waking up, but already the first athletes are attacking the slopes of the Terril, an exceptional training ground. “Thanks to our ancestors, who made this site, we can have fun, train our legs, cardio”, explains one of them. Vincent Cohez is another regular on the site. He is technical director within the chain of heaps. A naturalist who keeps the same pleasure with each climb. “I love coming here early in the morning, because we see the Terril differently. Every day, it’s a beautiful sight”he points out.
A site open to all
A nature in perpetual evolution. And plants are one of the best indicators of this. A fine example, the horned poppy, which grows more by the sea. At the foot of the Terril, another setting. Flower meadows very rich in species and a rare plant diversity in the region. Diversity, too, of landscapes. “We are no longer really in the mining basin, we are in a natural setting”, rejoices Vincent Cohez. Running, hiking or strolling, the site is deliberately left open to everyone, to come and reclaim this mining wasteland. Only one of the twins is reserved for its keepers, the goats, new workers in an ever-changing environment.