This is Biel, or Bienne in French, a bilingual city of nearly fifty thousand at the northern tip of Lake Biel, and one of the most underrated towns in Switzerland. It sits where the lake meets the first long ridge of the Jura, and its centre is a mixture of a medieval old town, with a fountain-filled square and half-timbered houses, and the clean, grid-like modernism of the twentieth-century town that grew up around the watch factories.
Watches are the thing. Biel is the home of Swatch and Omega, and the Swatch Group headquarters, a long timber-clad building by Shigeru Ban, sits on the edge of the old centre. For generations the town's economy has been tied to precision manufacturing, and the old workers' quarters have been slowly turned into galleries and cafés. A walk in the Neustadt, the planned town with its straight streets and 1930s buildings, shows a version of Swiss modernism that is a world away from the chalets and cows on the postcards.
The geography is dramatic for a small city. A funicular runs from the lakeside up to Magglingen, on a ridge about four hundred metres higher, where the Swiss federal sports school stands among meadows, and the view over the lake and the Alps on a clear day is superb. Behind the town, the Taubenloch gorge cuts into the limestone. On the roads, the climb to Magglingen and the long ridge above the lake give excellent riding, with good surfaces, smooth bends and views to the south. The hills above the town are well known to Swiss riders, and on sunny weekends you will find plenty of company, so keep the pace sensible, because speed cameras and police checks are routine.
Biel has all the services of a regional city: fuel, repair shops, supermarkets and a wide choice of restaurants, with Italian and Portuguese places that reflect the communities who came to work in the factories. A perch fillet from the lake, with a glass of local white wine, is the traditional lunch.
Sit by the lake in the late afternoon, and watch the sailboats. The long summer evenings make it easy to linger.