The south shore of Lake Neuchâtel is a long, soft margin of reeds, shallow water and woodland, and it hides one of the richest archaeological records in Europe. Pointe de Montbec, near the villages along the Fribourg and Vaud shore opposite Neuchâtel, is one of the places where prehistoric lake dwellers built their villages on the water's edge thousands of years ago. Their houses stood on piles driven into the soft lake shore, and when lake levels rose, the remains were sealed under water and mud, preserving wood, textiles, seeds and tools in astonishing detail. The prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps were inscribed by UNESCO in 2011 as a single serial site spanning six countries, and this shore contributes a good number of them.
What brought many of these sites to light was a feat of nineteenth-century engineering. The first Jura Waters Correction, carried out from the 1860s onward, lowered the levels of the lakes of Neuchâtel, Biel and Morat by around two and a half metres to stop the flooding of the Seeland plain, and suddenly the remains of ancient villages appeared along the shores. Collectors and archaeologists rushed in, and the so-called lake-dweller fever spread across Switzerland, shaping a national myth of early ancestors living on the water.
Today the shore is protected as the Grande Cariçaie, the largest lakeshore marshland in Switzerland, a haven for herons, grebes, reed warblers and countless insects. The roads that follow the shore, a little inland from the reeds, run through farmland and villages with gentle curves and good surfaces, and the slight rise of the land gives views across the lake to the Jura mountains. Traffic is light outside the summer weekends, but watch for tractors, cyclists and the odd wandering family. Evenings are glorious, with the sun setting over the Jura.
The villages along the shore, such as Portalban and Gletterens, have cafés and small restaurants, often serving perch fillets from the lake, and Gletterens has a reconstructed prehistoric village that brings the pile-dwelling story to life. Fuel is available in larger towns like Estavayer-le-Lac or Avenches, the latter also home to the remains of the Roman capital of Helvetia. Make your break by the shore, walk to the edge of the reeds, and look out over the water. It is calm, green and quietly fascinating.