May 2009, Chemin de Chaussée-Notre-Dame-Louvignies. The cameras on the roof of a Google Street View car capture a donkey amongst some trees next to a barn, two people in a black Peugeot – half on the grass verge, the number plate blurred – and a succession of gentle bends in the narrow concrete track, with fields on one side and an elongated hill strewn with large chunks of stone on the other.

Demand for blue stone and aggregates is high; the vein has not yet been exhausted. Nine years later, the hill has shifted; it now screens the quarry a hundred metres further north. That stretch of road has disappeared and been diverted.