Muddy Care Blog Week 13

Phase 4 – electric cycling

Written by Keira

After a four-week break, which luckily for us coincided with all the terrible storms we had, we all met in Talgarth to get our minibus to Builth Wells. Most of us hadn’t seen each other during the break, so the bus journey allowed us all to catch up. We were able to tell each other how we had been feeling, how we felt about starting the electric cycling, but being British, the majority of our talk focused on the weather we had endured during February!

We arrived at the Builth Wells show ground, where we had a drink in the local restaurant and Claire and Lee talked to us about the electric bikes and what the plan was for that day. By this point we were all pretty excited to try out these powered bikes, as we had heard such good reviews about them from Claire and Lee. We met Luke and Olivia, who provided us with the electric bikes and an electric trike through their company - Drovers Cycles. We all got introduced to our bikes, each one was slightly different as they had taken into account our differences in height, mobility and balance, to ensure that we all felt safe. Once Luke and Olivia had adjusted the seat height for each of us, provided us with helmets and cycling gloves and explained how to use the electric bikes, we were ready to try them out.

All of us had previously ridden a bike, although some of us not for many years, but it didn’t take us long to get back into the rhythm of cycling. We cycled round the showground, trying out the different powered modes and some of us even racing to see how fast we could go! Luke and Olivia then had us practice our moves, by giving us each a position on a bike, such as handle bars, seat, back wheel and when our position was called out, we had to either slow down and pull in, to let others pass or to speed up and pull out, to get to the front. The instructors were both very impressed on how quickly we had adapted to the electric bikes and how confident we seemed on them.

After this practice on the show ground, we were ready to go out for a ride. The start of the ride meant that we had to cycle along the road until we came to path alongside the river. Some of us were a bit apprehensive about being on the road, but we all stuck together and we had Luke, Olivia, Claire and Lee alongside us, so we were in very safe hands and all confidently managed the road. We then cycled on a pathway alongside the river and up onto a country lane where the last part of the ride ended in a very steep hill. This did seem quite daunting, but by using the power assisted modes on the bike, nearly all of us where able to cycle up it, easily and almost effortlessly. We took the same route to get back to the showground and going down the hill was definitely more fun then going up it! By the time we had got back, we had cycled 13km, which none of us had expected.

The feeling these bikes gave us was so freeing, we were able to move with minimum effort, cover a large distance and with some speed too. Where as normally most of us can find walking difficult and the thought of cycling almost impossible. I think all of us left that day feeling that we had achieved something and we’re definitely looking forward to the following weeks of this module.