We are being most un-motorhome-like on this trip since we’ll be rooted in one place for a month. [What our late lamented American friend Keith used to refer to as being potted plants.] We must hope that relaxing doesn’t metamorphose into boring. It shouldn’t; when we had Casa Libélula we’d be here for three months. I’ve booked a rental car to give us more flexibility for a chunk of January. For now, however, we are back to using our e-bikes.
My bike has been through the wars, yet again, and was getting close to not making it on this Xmas trip. I should return to our escorted 2025 Spain trip back in September when we were staying at Baiona.
For reasons of sheer embarrassment, I failed to mention messing up my poor ol’ bike in September. As we were preparing to leave the Baiona campsite to head into Portugal, I was reversing Frodo, as instructed, into the motor vehicle service point to drain his grey water. I was leaning out of the driver’s side window watching to position our waste water outlet above the drain. What I wasn’t watching was the reversing camera. Behind Frodo or, more significantly, behind the bikes mounted on the back of Frodo, was a metal post, which I managed to reverse into with the rear wheel of my bike. Only later did I discover that the rear wheel rim was not just buckled but bent. With the bent rear wheel now jamming in the rear forks, the bike was now unusable.
Wind forward to our return home intending to get poor ol’ bike fixed. It would clearly need a new rear wheel, the bent rim being unrecoverable. My bike is an estarli e28 assembled in Berkhamsted not far from our home.
Enter e-gotcha #1. My initial thought was to just return my buggered rear wheel to the local dealer to order a replacement. Not so fast, Speedy. “Regular” bikes have quick-release levers on the hubs of both front and rear wheels. Not so e-bikes or, at least, not so those e-bikes with the motor in the rear hub. [Some are in the pedal crank.] Such e-bikes have large nuts fixing the rear hub into the rear forks. In our case, these are 17mm large nuts.
Think about the implications of this for a moment. Should you be unlucky enough to suffer a rear wheel puncture, unless you are prepared to try to fix it in-situ, getting tied up in the rear forks, rear mudguard and chain mechanisms [most unappealing], your puncture repair kit now has to include a bloody great 17mm open-ended spanner.
There’s another less than helpful wrinkle: an electric cable runs from the controller on the front of the bike, along the rear forks (attached by cable ties), through the bloody great 17mm nut and into the rear wheel hub containing the motor. Your rear wheel is effectively tethered to your bike. Your puncture repair kit now also needs to contain a knife or scissors to cut the cable ties attaching said cable to said rear forks together with, after the puncture has been repaired, new cable ties to re-attach said cable to said rear forks.
What a palaver. Pray that you do not suffer a rear wheel puncture or, indeed, drive into another post.
Chickening out of jumping through these hoops to remove the rear wheel, I took the entire bike back to the dealer. More accurately, the dealer very helpfully collected it, since I couldn’t even wheel it with the bent rear wheel.
Enter e-gotcha #2. Though my bike is less than two years old, estarli have seen fit to begin using an updated rear hub. Their latest hub has integral gears rather than my trusty and more conventional derailleur arrangement. Wait for it: The latest hub is not compatible with the original controller so, without changing a whole lot more, the latest wheels would be no good to me. [SIGH. Built-in obsolescence, or what?]
However, my e-bike dealer said that estarli had some reconditioned old wheels with my kind of hub. They’d be cheaper, anyway. OK, sounds good – go for it. A replacement wheel was duly ordered and, after a week or so, fitted. [The gear block had to be moved over to the replacement wheel.]
After all that was done, I picked my bike up with some relief and began cycling back home. My relief did not last very long. I got half way home when all power disappeared and the replacement hub began making distressing graunching noises. I returned to my dealer on manual power, which felt a whole lot more strenuous, I have to say.
This time the whole bike was returned to estarli. After a week or so of hearing nothing, except that they hadn’t looked at it yet, I was getting nervous that it would not be back in time for this trip.
A contact of Francine’s, hearing my tale of woe, very kindly loaned me a quite similar older e-bike of his as a back up. How gracious is that?
Just over a week before this trip, I learned that estarli would be looking at my stricken bike. This they did and it was eventually back at my dealer in our home town. Once again I collected it. This time, I made it all the way home. I rode it a couple of times and it behaved itself. I can’t say my confidence was high but I finally decided to bring my bike to Spain rather than the loaner.
After that lengthy historical aside, back to the present.
Today we boarded our bikes to ride into Jalón. It’s Saturday so the accursed rastro [a flea market] would be in full swing and the town and bars would be heaving. We wanted some shopping (read beer and wine), though, and would brave the nonsense to get to a supermarket.
That was after we had managed to take a completely wrong turn in the maze of tracks winding their way through the vineyards and orange groves lying between Alcalalí and Jalón. How silly did we feel, living here for years and now going the wrong way? How the memory plays tricks on one. We unwound our mistake to eventually find the correct route, which landed us slap bang in the middle of the rastro before we could actually get to a supermarket.
At least I got my beer.
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