Interlaken sits between the Thunersee and Brienzersee lakes, at the entrance to the Jungfrau region — not traditionally thought of as road-cycling country, but home to one of Switzerland's most complete Alpine climbs.
The Grosse Scheidegg climbs from Grindelwald or Meiringen through terrain closed to private cars — only the yellow PostBus shares the road — passing directly beneath the 1,700-metre rock walls of the Eiger's north face. From Interlaken, the full loop covers roughly 80 kilometres and 1,700 metres of climbing, with the steepest section, out of Grindelwald, averaging 11% over 6.5 kilometres.
In the 2011 Tour de Suisse, Peter Sagan came back from a deficit on the fast descent into Grindelwald to catch Damiano Cunego and win Stage 3 — a piece of race history still cited by riders tackling the same road today.
For a base, Interlaken offers a flat warm-up along Lake Brienz before the Scheidegg's real climbing begins — one of the few genuinely spectacular Alpine passes not built around a Tour de France legend, but a Tour de Suisse memory instead.
