The rolling Kiesental valley gives way to hills and gullies along the Emme, you are in Emmental, Gotthelf country, a picture-book landscape and home to down-to-earth people. In Burgdorf, the fortress stands defiant on high sandstone and in Wynigentäli impressive farmhouses stand proud, little day-labourers’ huts pressed against the Schattseite slopes. After the small towns of Herzogenbuchsee and Langenthal, you cross the Langeten water meadows, where periodic flooding supplies the soil with nutrients.

In blessed silence you admire the skilled woodcarving on the baroque choir stall in the St. Urban Monastery before the roar of the motorway in Wiggertal brings you back to the present and remains in the background as far as Sursee. Beromünster, the national radio transmitter scrapes the sky on a low hill, the sombre Richensee Tower sits in the dip between the Hallwilerseee and Baldeggersee lakes, things brighten up again on the ascent with Heidegg Castle and its rose garden.

The Lindenberg, a long ridge, separates Luzern from Aargau. Downhill run to Freiamt and the renovated Muri Monastery, followed by the wide Reusstal marshes, a peaceful natural paradise. Uphill to Säuliamt, once a rather poverty-stricken area off the major trading routes. A motorway soon penetrates the rural idyll. Birmensdorf, Urdorf and Schlieren, independent and village-like yet already caught up in the maelstrom of Zurich city.