Burgdorf looks like what a Swiss town ought to look like, and has the good sense not to make a fuss about it. A hilltop castle of pale stone stands above the old town, rooflines step down the slope, and the river Emme runs below in a green gorge. It is a town of nearly fifteen thousand people, and the gateway to the Emmental, the hill country of canton Bern that gave its name to the most famous Swiss cheese.
The castle was built by the Zähringer dukes in the twelfth century and later passed to Bern, and it has served as a fortress, a residence, a prison and, for a few years around 1800, a school. The educational reformer Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi taught children here, developing methods of learning by observation and doing that influenced schools across Europe, and the town is rightly proud of the connection. Today the castle houses a museum, a youth hostel and a restaurant, and the view from its terrace over the old town and the hills is a good start to a day.
The Emmental itself is a landscape of rolling hills, broad farmhouses with enormous overhanging roofs, and green pastures where brown-and-white cows graze. The farmhouses, built of timber with deep eaves and decorated balconies, are among the most distinctive in Switzerland, and they were the setting for the novels of Jeremias Gotthelf, a pastor who wrote about peasant life in the nineteenth century. The cheese, with its round holes and nutty flavour, is made in village dairies, and visitors can watch the process and buy a wedge to take away.
For a rider, the Emmental Panorama Road is a winding, gentle route over the hills, with long bends through forest and meadow, farmhouses at every turn and wide views over the valleys to the distant Alps. It is not a road for speed, since the villages are frequent and tractors are common, but it is a charming one, especially in the early morning when mist lies in the hollows. The surface is mostly smooth, though some of the narrower lanes are patched and have gravel at the edges. Traffic is light except on sunny Sundays, when families and cyclists come out in numbers.
Burgdorf is a real town with everything you might need: fuel stations, supermarkets, workshops, bakeries and restaurants. The bakery windows are full of dense, buttery cakes, and a slice with a coffee is a worthwhile reward. Bern is the capital, about twenty kilometres to the south-west, and Lucerne is not far to the east.