Itinerary: On the bike, follow Swiss Regional Route 64 to Biel, stay overnight, come home by way of Sankt Peterinsel and Swiss National Route 8.
Looking for something close and easy, we chose Biel as our destination. Jon was able to put the routes into our GPS. And we decided to try a trip without the trailer, just a small pack, so no camping.
Biel is downriver from Bern so the 45k ride to Biel was as expected a gentle downhill grade, through what now seems typical to us: constantly changing vista of small towns, farmland, and forests. No surprises, nothing amazing. Biel itself is mostly a modern city with bland buildings. We took a funicular to Magglingen—us and a few dozen heavily padded mountain bikers. They rode down; we walked. Looking at their trails, we understood the padding. The view from up top was amazing. The walk through the forest, delightful. Biel’s tiny bit of Oldtown, a couple blocks of medieval buildings, was unimpressive. After dinner, we strolled down by the harbor, picked up some ice cream to go with the cherries we’d gotten at a roadside stand and called it a night.
Sunday we felt quite capable of going the extra miles to see Sankt Peterinsel, a long narrow island at the southern end of the Bielersee. Apparently it’s a popular place for a stroll on a sunny Sunday morning, for we shared the path with lots of walkers, baby strollers, and other cyclists.
We knew our route back to Bern would be, on average, uphill since it was upriver. But the Swiss surprised us. The 8 is a National Route, yet there are spots where we passed through private property, carried the bike up and down stairs, and generally had a much harder time than we expected.
We did have a fun lunch in Aarberg, a cute town with a wooden covered bridge leading to the Oldtown square. A group of Harley motorcycles rode up and parked beside our bike, then some of the riders politely asked if they could share our table as the others were all full. Jon often tells the story of carrying a sign on his van loaded with bikes “When we grow up we want to be Harleys”. So MC points to our tandem and tells this to the Harley folks, the one English speaker passing this along to the others in German. Good for a laugh all round.
The last stretch was through Bremgarten Forest, which should have felt idyllic, a carless road through cool green shade. But we were so exhausted, even this seemed a struggle. That’s how it is, in life or in life on a bike, you can’t always know where the tough stretches will be.