La Route Buissonnière
Around Lille
How do you drive around Lille?
« People think the North is flat and grey. It has hills, windmills and red-brick villages that nobody ever drives through. »
Why driving through Lille is such hard work
Lille is the one French motorway junction built against a border. The A1 coming up from Paris, the A25 heading for Dunkirk, the A22 and A27 running into Belgium all converge on the same city, and the built-up area carries on without a break on the other side of the frontier.
The result is that local traffic, Channel-bound traffic and international through-traffic share the same roads in the same place. Heading south, or back up towards the ports, you get pulled into the city when you were only ever passing by.
In practice, La Route Buissonnière keeps you off :
- the Lille ring road and the approaches to the city;
- the A1, A25, A22 and A27 as they close in;
- the dense drive across the north-east of the old mining basin.
An illustrative diagram, drawn in our own style. La Route Buissonnière does not use live traffic data.
Routing around Lille in three steps
- Open La Route Buissonnière and enter your start and destination (say, Arras → Dunkirk).
- Add Lille as a city to avoid, or simply let the app route around it.
- Follow the route: it takes you along the back roads, well clear of the city.
A real example: Arras → Dunkirk without the ring road
- Leaving Arras, you head north-west through Marœuil and Acq, over the hills of the Artois, then Servins.
- You cross the old mining basin at Hersin-Coupigny and Verquigneul, on the edge of Béthune, without ever turning back towards the city.
- You reach the Lys plain through Annezin, Gonnehem and Haverskerque, in a landscape of canals and poplars.
- You finish through the monts de Flandre — Steenbecque, Oxelaëre at the foot of Mont Cassel, Arnèke — then the drained wateringues at Bierne before Dunkirk.
What this detour costs, measured
- Standard route, motorway allowed: 115.1 km · 1 hr 13 min
- La Route Buissonnière, buissonnière profile (our scenic setting): 102.8 km · 1 hr 39 min
- The extra we own up to: −12.3 km · +26 min
- Closest approach to the centre of Lille: 6.1 km on the standard route, 31.1 km on ours
- On this particular drive the buissonnière route is actually shorter than the motorway route. That is a measured result for this corridor, not a general property of the app.
Measured on 4 August 2026 using La Route Buissonnière's own routing engine, with Lille set as a zone to avoid. Every town named above lies on the actual route; the app recalculates for your own start and destination. This drive is not faster, and it is not trying to be: the app does not use live traffic data.
Other drives where going around Lille makes sense : coming down from the Channel towards Picardy without the city; linking the Artois to the northern ports along the canals; reaching inland Flanders from the mining basin.
What you get for going around Lille
The North you usually cross at 130 km/h is a corridor. This one has relief: the Artois hills rise gently, the villages are built of dark brick, and the bell towers show up from far off above the beet fields. You drive a little slower, you look a great deal more, you wind the window down.
Then the land flattens all at once and the monts de Flandre appear, standing alone in the fields like islands. Canals begin to grid the landscape, the horizon widens, and the air turns salty well before the dunes. The road here is no longer time lost — it is already the journey.
Why doesn't La Route Buissonnière go through the centre?
Frequently asked questions
Enter your start and destination in La Route Buissonnière and add Lille as a city to avoid: the route then stays well to the west, through the Artois and the monts de Flandre, without using the ring road, the A1 or the A25.
On our Arras → Dunkirk example it is actually 12.3 km shorter than the motorway route, but takes 26 minutes longer, measured on 4 August 2026: the roads of the Artois are slower going. That result holds for this corridor, not for every drive.
No. On our verified route the detour stays entirely on the French side, west of the city. La Route Buissonnière currently covers France.
See also
La Route Buissonnière · an independent project, made in France, with no advertising.