Lützelflüh is the sort of Emmental village that would be forgotten by everyone except that a pastor once lived here and wrote about it. Jeremias Gotthelf served as the parish priest from the 1830s until his death in the 1850s, and his novels about farmers, cheesemakers and stubborn families gave the valley its literary identity. You will see his name on the church, the museum and half the brochures, and for once the fuss is deserved: read one of his books and the green, rolling hills around you start to look like a stage set for a very old argument over inheritance.
The Emme river runs through the village, brown after rain and clear in dry weeks, and the road follows it with gentle bends, farmhouses with enormous overhanging roofs, and the occasional tractor you will simply have to accept. This is not a road for attacking corners. It is a road for noticing that the barns here are the size of cathedrals, that the wooden walls are darkened by a century of sun, and that every second yard sells cheese or cream from an honesty box. The traditional Emmental cheese, the one with the holes, is made in the valley, though the big dairies now do most of it.
A couple of kilometres away, Trachselwald castle sits on a wooded hill above the road. It served for centuries as a seat of the Bernese bailiffs and later as a prison, and it features in the story of the Peasants' War of 1653, when Emmental farmers rose against Bern's taxes and debased coinage and lost badly. Their leader, Niklaus Leuenberger, was held at this very castle before being executed in Bern. It is worth remembering when you pass a perfectly peaceful farmyard.
With about four thousand people, Lützelflüh has a shop or two, a bakery and the practical stuff, and Sumiswald, just a few kilometres on, is bigger and has more choice for fuel. If you want a proper meal, a table at one of the traditional inns will usually bring you something with Rösti or a slab of meringue and thick Emmental cream, which is the correct way to end any lunch here. Early morning is the best moment on this road: mist lies in the hollows, the hay smells sweet in June, and the traffic has not yet found you.
Weather moves quickly over the Napf hills to the south, so keep a rain layer handy even when the sky looks innocent. Autumn adds fog, but also gold light that makes the hillsides almost absurdly pretty.