This route is roughly the one Vincent van Gogh took to Courrières. There he would "see the light" and realize that art was his calling, not preaching.

Vincent van Gogh walked from the Belgian Borinage to Courrières, then home to the artist-poet Jules Breton. Van Gogh admired Breton as a painter.

He took the walk during the harsh winter of 1878-1880, which he barely survived in the freezing cold. But there he saw the light. "I will take back my pencil, which I threw away with great discouragement, and start drawing again," he wrote to his brother Theo, after his return to Cuesmes.