Lake Neuchâtel is the largest lake entirely within Switzerland, a long, narrow body of water at the foot of the Jura mountains, and its shallow shores have been home to people for thousands of years. La Bessime is one of the prehistoric pile-dwelling sites of the lake, part of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps, listed by UNESCO in 2011. Like most such sites, it lies underwater or buried in the lake bed, with the remains of wooden posts, tools, pottery and food preserved in the mud, invisible to the visitor but invaluable to archaeologists.
To understand the pile dwellings, visit the Laténium in Hauterive, near Neuchâtel, one of the largest archaeological museums in Switzerland, with reconstructed houses and finds from the lake. Near the museum, at La Tène, a famous Iron Age site gave its name to the entire La Tène culture of the Celts, which spread across much of Europe.
The south shore of the lake, around Estavayer-le-Lac, is quite different from the north. Here, the Grande Cariçaie, the largest lakeshore wetland in Switzerland, stretches for kilometres, with reeds, marshes and forests, home to many birds. Estavayer-le-Lac is a charming medieval town, with a castle, narrow streets and arcades, and a quirky museum with a collection of stuffed frogs posed in nineteenth-century scenes.
For riders, the roads around the lake offer pleasant, relaxed riding. The road along the south shore passes through villages, fields and woods, with views of the lake and the Jura beyond. The north shore road, through Neuchâtel, is busier, with vineyards on the slopes above the lake. From the north shore, roads climb into the Jura, with winding routes through forests and pastures to the high plateaus around La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle, famous for watchmaking. Swiss police take speeding seriously, and fixed cameras are common at village entrances.
Estavayer-le-Lac, a town of over five thousand people about six kilometres away, has fuel, shops and restaurants; Cortaillod and Bevaix, on the opposite shore, are smaller. Try perch fillets from the lake, filets de perche, served with fries and tartare sauce, a classic dish of the region, with a glass of white wine from the vineyards of Neuchâtel. On a calm evening, the lake reflects the sunset over the Jura, and the view across the water is wonderfully peaceful.