The Gros-de-Vaud is the breadbasket of western Switzerland, a rolling plateau of wheat and rapeseed between Lausanne and the foot of the Jura, and the Venoge river cuts through it in a winding green valley. Here, around Penthalaz and Cossonay, the river runs in a deep wooded ravine below the hilltop town of Cossonay, an old medieval market town with a church tower that is visible for miles. The landscape is gentle and pastoral, with farms, orchards, small woods and villages of stone houses with big barns.
The Venoge is the subject of a famous song by the Vaudois poet Jean Villard Gilles, which every schoolchild in the canton knows, praising the little river that rises at the foot of the Jura and flows into Lake Geneva. Just north of here, between Eclépens and Orny, lie the remains of the Canal d'Entreroches, an ambitious seventeenth-century project to link Lake Geneva with Lake Neuchâtel and thus the Rhône with the Rhine by water. The canal was partly built and used for barges for more than a century, but the final section was never completed, and today you can walk along its dry bed through a rocky cutting in the forest.
The riding is relaxed and easy, with small roads winding through the fields and villages, gentle climbs and long views across to the Alps and the Jura. Traffic is light on the country roads, but heavier on the main routes near Lausanne and on the motorway. The towns and villages have plenty of 30 and 50 km/h zones, and the Swiss police are strict. For something more challenging, the Jura mountains are close: the roads over the Col du Mollendruz and the Col du Marchairuz, to the west, offer long, sweeping curves through forest and pasture, and are popular with riders from Lausanne and Geneva.
Cossonay has fuel, shops, cafes and restaurants, and Bussigny, about six kilometres south, is a larger town with more choice. Lausanne, just beyond, is a big city with everything you could need. La Sarraz, a few kilometres north, has a castle with a museum of the horse and a park. In summer, the fields are full of colour, with poppies and sunflowers, and the air smells of hay and ripening grain.