Well it’s about a year since I wrote on this blog. My situation has changed. From living happily (or so I thought) with my partner in Oxford, I am now back in Bath living on my own. Nic and I were together for 23 years and we had a loving relationship and many cycling adventures, particularly in Italy.
In my view, much evidenced in this blog, Oxford is much more cycle friendly than Bath will ever be and riding my bike there was life affirming and very rewarding.
I moved back to Bath last June to live again in Combe Down, in a street that I have often thought would be a good place to live, (it has since proved to be so), but riding a bike up the southern hills has become more of a struggle as I have aged, so I decided to get an electric bike conversion for my old Ridgeback Supernova. On the recommendation of my nephew I chose to go with “Swytchbike” as their conversion uses a small handlebar mounted battery and electric motor on the front wheel.
One of the problems with Swytch is the time the company takes to make the conversion kit available. The forecast from ordering was 6/7 months, but that was OK as the kit would arrive in either January or February of this year. However, the kit only arrived at the end of March.
Fitting the new front wheel with the motor was straightforward, but from this good start things went from bad to worse. A magnetic ring is to be fitted to the crank axle where it meets the bike frame. It is made of plastic and would not fit until some of the plastic connector was trimmed. Once this was achieved I then found that a vital component, a pedal sensor, which works with the magnetic ring was missing from the kit. I am now waiting for this essential component to be sent by “Swytchbike”. Let’s hope this doesn’t take too long and I can get on with assembling my electric conversion kit.
However, delay has made me get my “Genesis Croix de Fer” back into service, which I haven’t ridden for a couple of years.
I will continue to write updates on my continued efforts to install a bike conversion kit.
Hello, I'm Roger Symonds and I have created this blog to highlight local and wider cycling issues. Given the incredible interest and increase in cycling we must not miss this opportunity to provide the the infrastructure that gets even more people out on bikes in a safer environment.