Lovely hills, pretty farms, blossoming crocuses, rustic pubs and old crafts made by Emmental. The Upper Emmental is a great place to explore on a round trip by car, motorbike or eBike. Whether as an excursion or a two-day round trip with an overnight stay - the landscape between Langnau and Lake Thun is as varied as the holes in a genuine Emmental cheese.   

The most famous from the Emmental? Probably the most famous cheese in the world: Emmentaler AOP. Every child knows it and associates the region characterised by countless hills, valleys and grazing cows with the cheese with the large holes. And these loaves, weighing between 75 and 120 kg, mature in large numbers in a cheese warehouse in Langnau before being exported all over the world and form the starting point of our tour. What many people don't know is that the cheese cellars can be visited. On an hour-long guided tour, you will learn more about the ripening of Emmentaler AOP in the Gourmino AG cheese house. Up to 6,000 loaves of Emmentaler AOP and 3,500 loaves of Le Gruyère AOP are cared for and nurtured in the warehouses until they have reached their optimum ripening stage. Afterwards, of course, you can taste the cheese. By the way, you can still find original cheese trading houses all over Langnau - a particularly beautiful example can be found on Hansenstrasse.

Freshly fortified and with new impressions, we stop in the immediate vicinity at the Chüechlihus, the oldest and largely original wooden building in the region, dating from 1526. It is assumed that it was built as a commercial and trading house at that time. Today, the neat house houses a regional museum with a collection all about Emmental traditions and the past. The cute name, by the way, comes from the fact that a café was run here until 1956, offering Chüechli. Fine cakes and tarts, fresh bread and the finest chocolates can be bought a few metres further on at Confiserie Wisler.

Now we follow the course of the Ilfis River to Trubschachen, where two more sights await us. In the Aebi pottery, pottery is still made as it was in the old days. Great-grandfather Aebi started producing flower pots in Hasle in 1901. At the end of 2006, Aebi closed his parent company and concentrated on the show pottery in Trubschachen, which he had run as a branch since 1982. Even today, every piece of pottery is lovingly hand-potted, painted and artistically decorated. If you would like to make a cup yourself, the pottery also offers workshops.

You must not miss a visit to the traditional Kambly company. The closer you get to the visitor centre, the more intense the smell of Bretzeli, biscuit and Sablé. Bretzeli have been baked in Trubschachen for 111 years. The recipe goes back to the grandmother of company founder Oscar Kambly. Recently, the fourth generation has taken over the management of the family business. In the spacious, modern factory shop, you can learn more about the history and the craft and taste the various types of Guetzli as you wish. But beware: Pretzels can be addictive!

After so many goodies, we first need some exercise. If you are not travelling by eBike; you can stretch your feet well at our next two stops. At the crossing from the hamlet of Hüpfenboden to the Girsgrat near the village of Blapbach is the oldest man-made road tunnel in Switzerland, the Hegenloch. Around 1350, the plague raged in the canton of Bern. Anna Seiler, a widowed, childless but very wealthy burgess of Bern, cared for the sick in the "Spital vor den Predigern" in Bern. After her death, Anna Seiler endowed her hospital with a lot of property, houses and land and called on others to do the same. Among other things, she left pasture land in the area of the Vorderer Girsgrat. Direct access from Langnau was blocked by the Nagelfluh of the Girsgrat. It was not until the 19th century that mining technology was advanced enough to consider building a direct connection. Around the same time, the state of Bern took old artillery pieces out of service and donated the no longer used gunpowder for the construction of the tunnel.

After this detour, you will reach the highest point of our tour on countless hairpin bends and narrow roads: Alp Rämisgummen at over 1200 metres above sea level. If you are here in spring, you will experience blossoming crocuses in every conceivable shade of blue and white. But even during the rest of the year, the trip up Rämisgummen is always worthwhile, the view of the Bernese Alps and the Mittelland are simply phenomenal. In addition, countless hiking trails invite you to discover the region. You can stop off at the Erika mountain restaurant if you feel hungry again after the morning's delicacies.

Now it's back down the hill at a rapid pace. In Eggiwil there are some particularly beautiful old Emmental farmhouses and you can also admire one of the many wooden bridges in this region. Of the 300 or so covered wooden bridges in Switzerland today, a third are in the canton of Bern and of these, a third (33) are in the Emmental. The Geissbach bridge is one of the smallest in the Emmental wooden bridge landscape. Barely ten metres long, two metres wide and around three and a half metres high, it leads over the Geissbach, which flows into the Emme a little later. Probably nowhere else can the traditional construction method of the classic simple suspension structure be studied in such detail and in such detail as on this small edition of the large Emmental wooden bridges.

Now you have to decide. If you have time and leisure, it's worth taking a detour to Schangnau. Buy the original "Merängge" as a sweet souvenir at the Stein bakery, which is known far and wide, and experience the career of Schangnau's most successful ski racer for yourself on the Beat Feuz theme trail! The trail begins not far from his childhood home Roseggli in Bumbach and leads you for a good hour along easy-to-walk terrain along the Emme to the Kemmeriboden baths. On the path, the career of the Emmental Kugelblitz is told on panels. But don't just read about skiing, take part too! How good is your racing squat? Or your balance? Test yourself and then fortify yourself with a bratwurst on the junior world champions' course with barbecue area and covered seating. Or how about an overnight stay at the Kemmeribodenbad country inn? Treat yourself to a sauna and a bath in the warm, roaring wooden barrel, followed by a delicious evening meal before you fall asleep in the Heugade room and hopefully dream of crocuses, pretzels and meringue.

If you have to skip the detour to Schangnau due to time constraints, we recommend two more stops on our Emmental round trip. Above the village of Röthenbach stands the almost 1000-year-old Würzbrunnen Church, which was first mentioned in a letter from Pope Eugene III in 1148. In 1494, the church fell victim to a conflagration. It was rebuilt in the same year. A charred piece of wood in a niche of the northern outer wall is a reminder of this fire. The organ was built in 1785 and can probably still be heard at almost every wedding. The church became famous through the Gotthelf films, where the little church served as a film set, for example in the cult film Ueli der Knecht with the main actors Lilo Pulver and Hannes Schmidhauser.
The crowning finale of our journey through the Upper Emmental is a vantage point at dizzy heights. Let the day come to a fitting end on the Chuderhüsi lookout tower. The Chüderhüsi not only attracts attention with its witty name, the tower also has a lot to offer in other respects. The 42-metre-high structure stands in the middle of an idyllic forest and is made entirely of silver fir wood. You reach the large platform via 195 steps, from where you have a breathtaking view over the Emmental. It is particularly beautiful here at sunset.