Auvernier is a wine village with its feet in the water. Its old stone houses, cellars and narrow lanes climb from the shore of Lake Neuchâtel into vineyards, and the lake bed just off its little harbour holds the remains of prehistoric villages. Les Graviers is one of the sites in the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps, where archaeologists have found the traces of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements, with wooden piles, tools, pottery and food remains preserved in the lake mud. Many of the finds from the region are displayed at the Laténium, a superb archaeology museum by the lake at Hauterive, on the other side of Neuchâtel.
The village is one of the main wine centres of the canton, with family estates producing Chasselas, Pinot Noir and the local rosé, Oeil-de-Perdrix, the partridge's eye. In autumn the wine festival in Neuchâtel brings parades and celebrations, and the cellars of Auvernier open their doors for tastings.
The riding here starts gently along the lake, then climbs steeply into the Jura. The road north from Neuchâtel over the Vue des Alpes pass toward La Chaux-de-Fonds is a classic, with sweeping bends, good surfaces and, as the name promises, views across the lake to the Alps on clear days. La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle, the watchmaking towns, are part of a UNESCO listing for their urban planning built around the watch industry. To the west, the Val-de-Travers is the birthplace of absinthe, the green fairy, which was banned in Switzerland for nearly a century and is now made legally again in the valley's distilleries.
Auvernier has a few cafés and restaurants, and Peseux and Neuchâtel, close by, have fuel, shops and every service. Swiss roads are well maintained, but speed limits are strictly enforced, cameras are common and fines steep. The motorway vignette is needed if you use the motorways.
Come in late spring, when the vineyards turn green, or in autumn for the harvest. Summer evenings by the lake are lovely, with swimmers and sailors making the most of the light. Sit in a café by the harbour with a glass of local wine, after the riding is done, and look out over water that has drawn people to its shores for thousands of years.