It took no time for Tom and me to see what he meant. As any cyclist knows, on a bike you not only feel the landscape but smell and hear it too. Yet, with an electric bike, instead of worrying about the next grueling climb, I could relax and inhale musky patches of Russian olive trees and wonder whether cows or sheep would be around the bend based on the tone of their bells. We sped around weathered wooden chalets with geraniums bursting from window boxes. The path itself was paved and no wider than a sidewalk, a rollicking ribbon that rose and fell with the surge of the land.

We stopped about 20 miles outside Burgdorf in Lünisberg, which seemed to to be no more than a couple of farms, one of them run by the Flückiger family. Ursula Flückiger emerged from the kitchen, wiped her hands on an apron, and sold us slices of plum pie and two cold glasses of fresh milk. “How do you get that to taste so good?” Tom asked and ordered another round.

We never made it to the bed-and-breakfast. Our batteries were down to about 40 percent by the time we reached Madiswil, a village about 10 miles short of our goal, and we decided it was time for us to make our first swap for a fresh battery. We followed a red sign with a bike and a battery on it to the Gasthof Bären hotel, one of 600 swap points around the country. The hotel tavern was cozy, with wood tables and tidy windows blurry with rain. A young woman disappeared behind a wooden door and returned with two fresh batteries. I was just about to leave when Jürg Ingold, the owner, offered us two rooms that had suddenly come open. It was an easy decision. We took hot showers and headed for the pub, where we tore into plates of entrecôte and chicken, and lingered late into the night with a small bottle of red Swiss-Italian wine. The silverware came sorted in a bike saddle and the bread was served in a fender.

The 11-room exposed-timber inn, built in 1746, is something of a mother ship for e-bikers who, at least in Switzerland, seem to gravitate toward finer food and crisper sheets than more budget-oriented long-distance cyclists. On a busy day Mr. Ingold said he would get 100 cyclists coming by to change batteries. “Some order something to eat or drink, others spend the night, some swap and go,” he said.

The next morning Tom returned to Bern, leaving me alone for Day 2. I planned to turn south for 60 miles. The rain had stopped and it was barely 60 degrees. Perfect cycling weather.

Whereas I had been skimpy with the power the day before, this time I decided not to hold back. I put the bike in “high,” which increased my own power by 150 percent; eventually the motor turned off at about 16 m.p.h., the legal limit for an electric bike to still be considered a bike. (Other models go faster but they require plates, like mopeds).

But I was in no rush. I stopped at the crest of a small rise and settled into a pleasant wooden bench perched under a colossal linden tree. The Alps soared behind manicured hillsides to the south; the gentle, rounded backs of the Jura mountains rolled to the west. There was no way a tourist could come here without a bike, and I relished the serene beauty splayed before me. Five Flyer riders rode by and waved. They were all well into their 50s, the largest age group of Heart Route fans, Mr. Hasler had told me. Then two small tractors carrying four farmers rumbled by.