I'd rather be walking

Sunday 12th July 2020 - local bike ride and Geocache - 12 miles

Apart from a local two miler this was my first ride on the nearly new Carrera Vengeance E bike I acquired a couple of weeks ago.

I bought the bike to enable linear walks leaving at one end to cycle back to the car or vice-versa. From today's experience I think that will remain as its principal use.

I guess this is something personal but I have to have no particular reason for a walk, but with the bike I am telling myself I must have an objective. A café halfway round would suffice but in view of Big C that is not an option at the moment.  I was enthusiastic about Geocaching for a while but after finding 334 I let that drop back in 2016. There are new caches in my area since. An easy one hidden behind a mile marker on the way to Crooklands gave me something to go for.

The E bike has three modes of assistance and 8 gears. I have found that on the flat without a headwind the bike is easy to pedal at about 15 mph in the highest of the eight gears without assistance (downhill is of course faster) but I certainly felt the benefit and need of switching-on even for the slightest inclines. Until I returned to Arnside to ascend the steep hill up from The Albion there was no need to use No. 3 maximum assistance, but don't be fooled, pedalling is still a form of serious exercise - I had some preconception that E-biking was really cheating, but not so by a long way. The ascent from Arnside was at my limits even in the lowest gear and maximum assistance.

I found myself whizzing past things without having time to see properly. Yes, I know one could stop to look but if one is walking, in view of the slower speed, one can look without stopping , and if required stopping is easy, but with the bike it seems to be too much of a faff. I find cycling to be much harder work and quite uncomfortable, and I get nothing like the sense of enjoyment I do from walking. Another factor is of course my age and I have to acknowledge that whilst I feel reasonably competent on the bike I am nothing like as tuned into it as I was when I used one extensively climbing the Munros eleven years and more ago.