Bikes

[Brains]

Do you arrive before or after sunrise?

I leave around 7.30pm arrive around 7.30am
Typically about 9-10hrs riding time and 2+ hrs of stops
Given that it's around the shortest night of the year, I've never made it for dawn!

 

[MattR]

I leave around 7.30pm arrive around 7.30am
Typically about 9-10hrs riding time and 2+ hrs of stops
Given that it's around the shortest night of the year, I've never made it for dawn!

We probably have around 80 mins stop time but it depends on Sudbury. I aim to be in bed by 6am and have breakfast mid morning.

Do you bling up your bike? Mine ends up looking like Blackpool Pier with my lid twinkling like a lighthouse

 

[Parrot Face]

It depends on where you are going and what you are doing

We have Bromptons:
Brilliant for space, if needed they both can fit in the under bed locker
Great for a local run
I've done 20-30 miles on one on a regular basis
Every year you see dozens of them on the Dunwich Dynamo run (120 miles)

We also have Thorn touring bikes
They either fit in our garage or on the rear rack
Being Tourers they are very versatile, go almost anywhere.

We also have a couple of second hand Dahon folding bikes with 20" wheels
These are the 'pub run' bikes they will go off road happily

On longer trips we will often take 2 folders and 2 tourers or a combination of the above

We have had mountain bikes and road bikes but we find the trusted Bromptons that we bought over 20 years ago are now the main ones we take in the motorhome. Yes you can do 30 miles on them but the advantage is that as you swap and change vans over the years some will have bike racks, some wont , some will have large garages some wont but the Bromptons ,as they fold up, will always fit in somewhere.

 

[Brains]

We probably have around 80 mins stop time but it depends on Sudbury. I aim to be in bed by 6am and have breakfast mid morning.

Do you bling up your bike? Mine ends up looking like Blackpool Pier with my lid twinkling like a lighthouse

Of course!
A couple of chains of battery powered Christmas lights is compulsory minimum requirement!

 

[Brains]

We have had mountain bikes and road bikes but we find the trusted Bromptons that we bought over 20 years ago are now the main ones we take in the motorhome. Yes you can do 30 miles on them but the advantage is that as you swap and change vans over the years some will have bike racks, some wont , some will have large garages some wont but the Bromptons ,as they fold up, will always fit in somewhere.

We have big cordura bags for our Bromptons, which means they can be shoved in a locker with other stuff and not scratch the bikes or make other stuff dirty

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[The Coops]

Bought an electric bike from Decathlon in Boulgne 4 years ago for E650 and it is brilliant, we just take the battery off if carrying outside the van or leave it on inside the garage its a ladies dutch style and bombs along at about 19 mph no trouble with a range of around 45miles. I built an electric bike using a kit of e bay and fitted it to my Ghost 1300 city bike which I got in a sale from an on line retailer ( end of range and had £500 off) again had it for nearly 5 years and touch wood no trouble . If on outside rack, battery off and inside garage leave on we have the dutch rear wheel type locks on both bikes and decent u shackles and lock both bikes together and then lock to towbar or if outside to something substantial. No battery no use for e bike. The conversion was straightforward and the e kit was £350 with everything needed again about a 40 mile range as I am a bit bigger than the other half, for an example of range I can go from Blackpool to Carnforth on a single charge. We started off with a couple of the electric folders from Hal***ds which were on offer around £650 each and folded down for storage, they fell apart after 3 months use with battery cases cracking, cranks unwinding, pedals disintegrating and spokes breaking, We ended up getting a full refund from Hal88rds and got our current bikes

 

[EMS]

When we bought our first van we bought a pair of second hand small wheel folding bikes at £100 each. The bikes have full suspension and wide tyres so going off road is no problem, they are quite heavy compared to my road bikes but they are anodised silver alloy so do not need any attention. They easily fit in the garage, so I checked and found I could have fitted my road bike! We have used them a lot when away for the convenience and a bit of fun across country plus exercise.
So check for a second hand bikes in your area then if it they are stolen it will not have been too expensive.

 

[Richard n Ann]

Bikes are ok, we started out with them but Ann couldn't keep up and was hesitant at junctions etc. Also riding becomes a chore if you need to get somewhere rather than riding purely for the fun of it. So I got a petrol scooter for us and we've never looked back, you keep up with the traffic flow and bypass the queues, plenty storage under the seat and I've added a rear box too. It's insured if it goes missing so it's worry free. Gives you the freedom to go anywhere ?

 

[Clickem]

That looks a useful size of scooter. Please can I ask:

What model is it?
Can you ride with two up on a full car licence?
Does it cope with two up OK?

 

[Richard n Ann]

That looks a useful size of scooter. Please can I ask:

What model is it?
Can you ride with two up on a full car licence?
Does it cope with two up OK?

Honda Vision 110cc

You need to do a test for 2 up you can ride it on your own with L plates if you passed your car test before... Erm ? 2001 maybe.

You can ride 50cc mopeds 2 up but they are restricted to 29mph and that drops to 5mph up steep hills ?

8bhp so It's not good up steep hills 2 up or if you want to pull out of a junction sharpish, but it's adequate for most journeys. Will do 55mph 2 up on the flat.

If I was buying again I'd go for the Honda SH125 mode it's very similar but 12bhp ?

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[Rivermount]

Thank you again for all your comments. Very useful. Best wishes Lizzy and Rob

 

[Conal]

We wouldn’t be without our Bromptons, my wife’s electric, mine not, but..... and it’s a very big but, not covered by the comments so far, in every single place we have been, in England, Ireland, France and Spain part of most bike rides have been in terrain that could be considered rough, and the small wheels and small tyres of the Bromptons are not suited to this.

We can cope with this to a degree, by getting off and pushing the bikes but hope that Brompton bring out a “moon” type tyre soon.

The other issue is that you get what you pay for. Spend either a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand, a cheap bike will probably have parts that can not be replaced when they wear out and may fall apart before a dearer bike would. My friends bought Chinese electric bikes a few years age and they are now scrap for these reasons.

We bought folding bikes for security reasons and are glad we did, but if we could fit full sized bikes, even folding ones, in with the rest of the things we take away with us, we would have done.

 

[Steve N Tracy]

Our first E bikes were a couple of Tesco's own brand small wheel Hopper folders, cost less then £400 each and were far better then I thought they would be, our next purchase were a couple of E-Ranger E bikes with 26 inch wheels they had between 30 and 40 miles range, we have recently bit the bullet and upgraded to a couple of Cube Kathmandu 625 Pro e bikes with the new lighter Performance CX motor nearly half the weight of the old CX motor, and with new Bosch 625 watt batteries, the range seems quite good I have done a 36 mile round trip at a average speed of 14.9 mph ride upto Portsdown Hill from home and the display reports another 50 miles left, on the tour setting which is not the lowest power use setting.