Neuchâtel Canton, from Noiraigue to Boudry
Distance: 11.75 km.
Walking time: 2h 35 min
Elevation gain: 151 m.
Access: Car and/or train.
Parking: at Boudry train station - 46.959258, 6.834741.
This walk is not our usual type of walks - it is not a loop hike! The distance is quite lengthy to walk in both directions but I would highly encourage you to walk the whole way. The sceneries keep changing, staying rather alluring. We parked our car at Boudry train station and took the train to Noiraigue, where we started our hike. This way, we were descending. If one prefers ascending, one can start from Boudry directly.
At the beginning of this hike, the water seems to be 'quiet' and it becomes more 'hectic' as the walk evolves. There were multiple picnic points with benches and we saw many people sitting on the grass or rocks near the river. We came across children, babies in backpacks and dogs.
The walk starts through Noiraigue, which is very quiet and peaceful. The path quickly starts to follow the river, which widens a lot with the walk. Eventually, we reached a long, metal bridge, where the river started getting louder and narrower, hitting large rocks and the cliff side. The pathway took us against the cliff rock on one side, with loud river hitting the cliffs on both sides. Here, we encountered the famous stone bridge, which is the cover picture. There is a viewing platform towards the bridge just before reaching it. The path between the platform and the bridge was dug into the cliff, resulting in lower i head height. We had to manoeuvre our baby backpack a little (we are also tall). After the bridge, the path follows the cliff side, where you can admire the 'hectic' river below. There are number of steps going up. After we escaped the cliffs, a short section of the walk followed a tarmac single lane road through the forest and later going through Champ-du-Moulin. Here are a few restaurants around and the path goes past Association de la Maison de la Nature Neuchâteloise. We crossed the 'calm' river through another bridge and followed the water, but on the other side. We came across a 3-way bridge, which was rather interesting! The wooden platform bridge took us inside a tunnel of a cliff for a brief moment. After that, the river started getting 'louder' around large rocks and we followed a forest route. Soon, we reached a series of long, uniform waterfalls. The views were equally stunning a the top of them and at the bottom. Just after that, the river stayed wide, but kept being interrupted by large rocks or small islands with trees. There were more steps (or rocks) to go down. When the river got quieter again, we came across yet another bridge, which seemed like an art-piece with its horizontal see-through tunnel on top. There was more steps inclining and the river stayed partially agitated with one cliff side and rocks. The end of the path was a single lane forest road which was fully covered in compacted leaves.
Please bare in mind, that even though the walk as descending overall, there were a few points of incline throughout the route.
More information about this hike can be found on Jura Trois-Lacs Drei-Seen-Land website here or MySwitzerland website here. Fore a detailed hiking map, please refer to Schweizmobil website here.
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