Orchard Route

 From Herisau, the hilly foothills of the Säntis are to be conquered, a green, sharply delineated landscape with scattered farmhouses. Dairy and fruit farming predominate here, and the route features apple and pear trees everywhere, be they standard trees, habitats for the many birds or high-yielding low trunk cultures. After reaching Schwellbrunn at around 1000 metres above sea level, you descend into the deep, craggy trench of the Necker (750m), only to sweatily climb to the thousand-metre mark again without rest. The reward for your pedalling efforts is a quiet upland moor, the Chellenmoor, where you’ll find heather, bog bilberry, pines and birches. You may hear a grass frog croaking or a dragonfly buzzing by. Far away are the ridges of the Churfirsten as you take the lively descent into the Thur valley, with its beautiful, centuries-old timber-framed building of the ‘Haus zur Mauer’ in Neu-St.Johann.