At about a thousand metres up in the Jura, in a long, high valley where winter arrives early and leaves late, two towns spent two centuries making most of the world's watches. La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle are strange, fascinating places: not pretty old towns, but industrial cities laid out on a grid, with long parallel streets of apartment blocks designed to let maximum light into workshops where generations of craftsmen assembled tiny gears by the window. Their urban planning, built entirely around one industry, is on the World Heritage list.
La Chaux-de-Fonds was rebuilt after a fire in 1794 according to a rational plan, and the result is a town that feels more like a small American city than a Swiss village. Le Corbusier was born here in 1887, and several of his early villas still stand on the hillside, including the Maison Blanche he designed for his parents. Louis Chevrolet, who co-founded the car company that still bears his name, was also born in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The International Museum of Horology is outstanding even for people who think they are not interested in watches.
The ride up is half the fun. From Neuchâtel the road climbs over the Vue des Alpes pass, at a little under 1,300 metres, with wide curves, good surface and, on a clear day, the entire chain of the Alps lined up across the horizon from Mont Blanc to the Bernese Oberland. On the other side you drop into the high valley with its dry stone walls, wood-pastures and spruce. North of Le Locle the land falls away to the Doubs, which forms the border with France, and the road to Les Brenets and the Saut du Doubs waterfall is a beautiful winding descent.
Le Locle has its own odd treasure: the underground mills of Col-des-Roches, where millers in the seventeenth century carved out caves to harness an underground river. The whole region also has a long and slightly furtive history with absinthe, which was banned in Switzerland for most of the twentieth century and distilled in secret in the Val-de-Travers next door.
Both towns have fuel, cafés, restaurants and hotels. Come prepared for weather: even in summer, the high Jura can be cool and wet, and in winter snow is reliable. The Neuchâtel wines from the lake shore below are worth sampling in the evening, once the bike is parked.