Erlach is a one-street town with a castle on top and a lake at the bottom, and that is most of its charm. It sits at the south-western tip of Lake Biel, where the Jura comes down to the water on the far shore, and its old town climbs a short, steep cobbled lane from the harbour up to the castle, a solid medieval fortress that now houses a school. The houses along the lane are of yellowish Jura limestone, with arcades at street level and red-tiled roofs, and from the top you look out over the lake and the vineyards on the slopes of the Jura opposite.
From the harbour, a narrow strip of land runs out into the lake: the Heidenweg, a natural causeway that leads to St. Peter's Island. It only appeared when the lakes of the region were lowered by the great Jura water correction projects of the nineteenth century, which drained the marshes of the Seeland and turned the island into a peninsula. You can walk or cycle along it, about four kilometres through reeds and woods, but not ride a motorbike. On the island stands a former monastery, now a hotel and restaurant, where the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau took refuge for a few weeks in 1765. He later wrote that it was the happiest time of his life.
Erlach sits on the language border. Across the lake, La Neuveville is French-speaking; Erlach itself is German-speaking; and the nearby village of Le Landeron is French again, with one of the prettiest old town squares in the region. The Seeland to the south is flat, fertile land, reclaimed from the marshes, and is now one of the main vegetable-growing areas of Switzerland, with fields of lettuce, carrots and onions stretching to the horizon.
The riding around here is gentle. The roads along the lakeshore are flat and fairly straight, with views over the water, and the roads through the Seeland are dead straight across the fields. For curves, head up into the Jura behind La Neuveville, toward the Chasseral, the highest summit in the Bernese Jura, with a road that climbs through forest and pasture to a viewpoint over the Alps. Erlach has a few restaurants and cafes, and the harbour is a lovely place to sit with a coffee or lunch, but for fuel, head to the larger towns: Ins, Le Landeron, or Murten, about twelve kilometres away.