A "Council" eBike to try out/assess available?

Thu 14 Jul 2022, 16:00

I recall someone mentioning an electric motor assisted bicycle available for borrowing to assess suitability.

No longer able to drive and suffering foot and back injuries which limit my walking to be dedicated to giving the dogs a walk every evening, maybe a pedal-assist ebike might make things like the Coop and Rosie a casual journey instead of a planning exercise in painkiller, scheduling, and stamina reserved for the dogs' welfare times.

But I've got some balance issues - anyone else ever heard of Mal d'Barquement or suffer from it...get in touch?! - and cannot easily kick over the top bar of a diamond frame. So I really need to try out a step-through framed eBike to see if I can safely use it as a runabout (the trapped spinal nerves severely limit the pressure I can put on a bicycle pedal up a slope so living in the Cotswolds is not ideal. Sad, as used to be able to do the Brighton-London run in a couple of hours and spin up up Ditchling Hill without a stop... and last time tried cycling back from the Co-op my left leg went partly paralysed just past Wychwood Paddocks. Pathetic.).

If there isn't a "town trial eBike" to borrow for a few days does anyone have an eBike to fit a 5'8" chap with 29" leg I could borrow for a few rides - with a drop frame preferably but probably can get over a top bar, if not conveniently - with a eBike I could borrow? I'd be ever-so grateful.

I had a go on an eBike last year in the School Playing Field in Wychwood Paddocks but the queau was so long I was only able to do one quick circuit, on the grass only on a level field, so got no sense of if it would work.

Anyone got any experience of eBikes for both town shopping/pubbinng AND trying to go further afield to say Chippy or Witney? And along some bridleways to shortcut and miss some dangerous road sections? Is there a single design of bike that enables mostly road riding, avec l'shopping bags, and a bit of very non hardcore offroading like the continuation of the Saltway to near Chippy which looks good on the map.

I've looked at Isla bicycles and their designs for older riders' needs, but they are all sold out...

Why don't we set up a Purchasers' Cooperative for Bicycles, like some places did in the late 19th Century and the bicycle boom? They were able to speed up shipments by ordering in "bulk" from some manufacturer who preferred to fill up a goods wagon on a train, then boat, like shipping to Hamilton, Ontario, from Humber bikes! Wherever Humber were built. Probably Birmingham!