Cycling holidays Aare-Route Grimselpass - Bad Zurzach

An imponsant alpine landscape with diversity: Reservoirs and power plants surrounded by icy green-gray granite mountains and white peaks. After a steep descent to the Aare Gorge, the route continues to Meiringen with its Sherlock Holmes Museum. Take a short breather, then pedal uphill and downhill along the shores of Lake Brienz, enjoying the views, until you reach your destination for the day, Iseltwald.

The turquoise Lake Brienz is quiet and serious, while the deep blue Lake Thun is cheerful and lively. Between the two lies the tourist resort of Interlaken, within sight of the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau, the icons of the mountain world. A boat brings you to Thun. You cycle through the wide Aare Valley, where large villages, open fields and a mighty river in a rich floodplain landscape accompany you on your ride to the federal capital of Bern.

A few pedal strokes will take you from Bern's UNESCO-listed old town to the idyllic Lake Wohlen. Cycling along the River Aare, you reach the Seeland region, which has been transformed from marshland into one of Switzerland's most productive vegetable-growing areas thanks to the Hagneck Canal. Behind the reed beds and floodplain forest, you can glimpse Lake Biel and soon reach the bilingual watchmaking metropolis of Biel.

This stage delights visitors with the “children” of the Jura water correction project: the Nidau-Büren Canal and the resulting Aare backwater loop in the Häftli nature reserve. The flat Grenchner Witi is also enchanting, with its abundance of birds, hopping rabbits and the Altreu stork colony. Here, the Aare meanders slowly, while in the distance, the St. Ursen Tower of the baroque city of Solothurn greets visitors.

Rivers and traffic, cities and people, factories and industrial warehouses: everything seems to crowd into the strip of land at the foot of the Jura Mountains, merging into a long ribbon of settlements along the River Aare. Nevertheless, the peaceful Swiss Plateau and nature are never far away.

You cycle through a wonderful floodplain landscape along the Aare, a bird paradise and home to irises and beavers. Past reservoirs to Switzerland's moated castle, where the Reuss, Limmat and Aare rivers converge and flow into the Rhine as the Aare near Koblenz. Continue to Bad Zurzach and individual departure.