A covered wooden bridge, a medieval town gate and a river the colour of bottle glass: Diessenhofen is the kind of small Swiss town that makes you wonder why you are in such a hurry. It sits on the south bank of the Rhine in the canton of Thurgau, between Stein am Rhein and Schaffhausen, and the wooden bridge across to Gailingen in Germany is one of the loveliest border crossings anywhere, a long, dim timber gallery where your footsteps or your exhaust echo off the beams. The old town behind it is compact, with painted facades, oriel windows and a clock tower over the main street.
The canton is famous for its apples and pears, and in autumn the roadside stands sell fresh juice and cider. Just upstream from Diessenhofen, on a bend of the Rhine, stands the former Dominican convent of St. Katharinental, founded in the thirteenth century, with a baroque church that is one of the finest in the region. Across the river, the German village of Büsingen is a curiosity: a German exclave entirely surrounded by Swiss territory, where the euro and the Swiss franc are both used and the postcode is Swiss as well as German.
The riding is relaxed. The roads between the villages are small, well surfaced and gently curving, with little traffic, and the route along the Rhine toward Stein am Rhein or Schaffhausen is lovely, with views over the water and the wooded hills on the German side. Speed limits are strictly enforced in Switzerland, and the villages have plenty of 30 km/h zones and cameras. In summer the river is full of swimmers floating downstream in the current, and boats run between Schaffhausen and Kreuzlingen.
Fuel is easy to find: Diessenhofen has a station, and across the border, Gottmadingen and the German towns often have cheaper petrol, though you need to remember the customs rules if you are carrying goods. Stein am Rhein, about ten kilometres east, is one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Switzerland, with painted houses around its main square, and Schaffhausen, ten kilometres west, has the Munot fortress and the Rhine Falls nearby. For a quiet break, the riverside restaurants in Diessenhofen are a good bet, especially for fish from the Rhine.