After being dormant for a few years I’m attempting to relaunch my channel as a cycling and e-biking adventure series based in the north of England. In this video I ride from Darlington to Northallerton and explain my reasons for getting an e-bike.
oh hello thank you for joining me well I’m just doing a uh a little ride out to North hon just come out of Darlington so today I’m hoping will be the uh relaunch of my channel which has been off for a few years was um a mixture of cycling and motorcycling um but now I don’t have a motorcycle at the moment so it’s going to be purely about cycling and I’m based in the north of England I spent my time between Darlington and Cambria the Eden Valley to be more precise so um the rides I’ll be doing will be uh predominantly from these two areas so today obviously is from Darlington just come out into the countryside now near um the C M racing circuit I’m heading south towards North Allison so it won’t be much of an interesting ride today today is more about testing the camera gear how it performs in windy conditions it’s quite windy today so we’ll see how we go just come along for the ride and if uh ride to get out of the north of England is something you’re interested in why not give me a follow click the Subscribe button within YouTube doesn’t cost you anything it just means that my videos will come out on your YouTube feed and if you hit the notification Bell you won’t miss any content I’m not going to put out weekly content it’ll just be where I consider I’m doing some interesting rights like I said today’s not really interesting it’s just about testing the equipment well it looks like I’m about to overtake a couple of cyclist morning morning yeah as you can see it’s quite flat around this part of the world so uh relatively easy I’m riding a Ribble ebike but uh I bu been building up my fitness since um well since the beginning of the year really and I’m finding that I’m using the uh the E functionality less and less now I’ll still use it if there’s like a steep hill I can’t get up or um just to make it a little bit easier I have reasons for getting an E Bike I’ll go into that later but the beauty about this ebike is you can ride it as a normal bike as well and it just gives me that confidence to go out on the longer rides uh I don’t have to worry too much about headwinds big heels because I know I’ve got the year assistance up my sleeve if I need it so I’m not needing at the moment like I said there’s nothing in the way of Hills really apart from a few Railway Bridges but I might need it on the way back because I’ll be going more into the wind coming back so and of course I’ll be a little bit tireder by then so we’ll see how we go I’m coming up now to the uh I think the first of two or three categorized climbs today so I might just put the assistant on just to uh make it nice and easy the distance today is about 40 Mi so I I’ll easy I could easily do the whole ride on the assistance but like I said I’m trying to build up my fitness and it’s really I’m I’m using it now just as a as a as a backup or when I’m feeling lazy like I am now so according to the Garment it’s 32 of a mile 15 M of climbing and average grading of only 3% so we’re not talking about anything serious here and I could do the climb without any assistance is what I’m doing at the moment and [Applause] it’s a very noisy sheep on the field next to [Music] me so I mentioned that I had my reasons for getting an ebike um but let me start by say saying that I’ve always been a cyclist never raced but um done many many nice tours some quite long distance cycled land and joh GRS I joined my first Cycling Club when I was 15 and through this L 70s through the 80s and up to the mid90s and so I did quite a lot of uh cycle tours mostly with the southeast eics cyclist touring Club and had really good times here you know and uh I gave up there really due to family commitments but still carried on cycling whether it would be just the occasional weekend ride or the occasional Sunday ride I should say and for Community to work to and from work over many years though I suffered with acid reflux I think probably near enough 20 years I was suffering with it and thanks thanks to my workplace health insurance I decided to get it sorted out got referred to a Hardy Street consultant and after under various tests and having cameras stuck down my throat I had an operation in 2008 which fixed it and I had 10 years of very high quality life should I say compared to the previous 20 years and in uh about 2012 I think it was I joined another local Cycling Club started cycling again regularly weekends but unfortunately it seems to bring back the symptoms of the acid reflux and I went back to see the consultant and I was told not really an option to have another operation um but you need to make some lifestyle changes for to manage the situation so the the consultant told me to uh really cut out three things my current lifestyle or my lifestyle then and the three things were stop eating spicy food um cut out alcohol and stop the serious cycling would have been okay to just poodle around the park on a normal bike but cut out the Ser of stuff with the hill climbs and going into the red so obviously I’ve been reluctant to do that because it’ been my life for so long but I never gave up alcohol completely but I did reduce my consumption and same with the CES but I lost the motivation really to cycle so probably from about 2018 it was 2018 because I did the ride London over the Su Hills as a kind of uh farewell and I took up landscape photography I’d always been interested in photography I used to take a camera on all the cycle keep a visual record of the events here unfortunately there was no video cameras in those days I would have loved to have to have loged them especially with some of the n6 we used to get up to so uh yeah I still love landscape photography but the problem is giving up cycling created a whole load of new problems um obviously I put on weight um I started get in leg pains not being able to sleep so uh I thought I’d really like to start cycling again get a bit of Fitness back so I tried getting on the bike again but I had to say it was not very successful I found it really hard and that just deflated me totally so um it was last year late last year I decided to uh to get an exercise bike for indoors to ride through the right through the winter Chang my diet a bit and that certainly help building up the strength but what really uh what I needed was motivation to get out on the roads again especially in the summer and I thought an ebike would be the perfect way to do it I’ve got for a Ribble because I have I’ve had Ribble bikes before and I still have a Ribble carbon road bike and I have no regrets whatsoever it just to put it bluntly it’s made me fall in love with Sion again I can get out I don’t have to worry about the hills about headwind things you don’t like about cycling so that’s my story basically and I want to carry on uh riding the ear bike when I don’t feel like riding my my normal bike especially r r Roa Cumbria quite quite undulating there in the Eden Valley and uh I’ll take you on a few Adventures we’re on Bas there is is is very close to Great Dell which of course is legendary among cyclists these days and I plan to do a little ride up there wait for some nice weather because it gets really windy up there big a day that’s nice and clear so we can appreciate the views so come along and join me I think we’re about um 3 miles from North Allison now nice little market town about 15 20 mi south of Darlington plenty of options for uh coffee stops CA Cafe is there there’s a couple of supermarkets plenty of um Outlets to to buy food whatever you want to do what you’ll find out about me is I’m a great fan of Costa coffees well it’s one of my old clubmates said on watchat the other week cost a lot coffee but I’m a huge fan and even though there’s there’s probably better cafes in North Alon I I will go for the cost of coffee because I just enjoy enjoy the flavors so just coming in soon nor Alison now I leave the camera rolling so you can see what the town has to offer any fans of McDonald’s you’re cated for here that’s a good timing there a hord’s here is anyone need some bike parts don’t your PBS obviously same s so here we are at Costa Coffee so here we are back out see ibly refreshed have to admit I’m feeling a bit cold now the G is showing 16° so the temperature has dropped by a degree or so hiding my flash in the front right there just so I don’t scare the horses yeah there’s a bit of rain in the air I did say we might get the old show hopefully it won’t come to anything or ride through it so we’re heading out of North hon coming into the village of prompton heading sort of North Northeast and coming back into Darlington through through Nishan as you see I had to put my gil on time to feel the cold still feel a few drops of rain in the air I’ve got about 15 mil to go and I’ve decided to uh turn the eist on just want to get home as soon as possible really it’s not particularly enjoyable I’m going into a headwind it’s cold feel a few spots of rain 2 past 11 I did promise my other half I’ll be home for lunch what have right thing that’s just lit up the sky this is a tiny little Village of Appleton whisk it’s here I usually have to make a decision do I turn left or right on the nice nice days and when I’m feeling like I want to extend the ride by about 3 or 4 miles I’ll turn right and head up through uh the town of yarm very popular and attractive little town just outside Middleport today I’m going to go left I’m going to turn left keep the uh keep it to a more direct route home like I said it’s getting a little bit on the late side the Lord Nelson in [Music] [Music] s [Music] [Applause] well I’m very sorry people but unfortunately the video camera run out of battery there and I wasn’t able to record any footage of the um second and third categorized climbs third one was quite um quite steep I’ve never been up there before but it was 11% in places I’m certainly glad of the ear assistance on that one so we’re heading back into Darlington now on this um on this track all rway used to used to be a a railway Track Running Out of Darlington to Dale as I say now it’s uh now it’s uses a bride away of people walk their dogs along here it’s a nice quiet little uh way back into dining and avoiding the um the main roads for the shops Etc it’s worth doing the extra Hill for really so I’ve got about 2 miles to go if you stayed with me this far thank you very much much appreciate it if you like the video give it a thumbs up always helps with the engagement if YouTube sees people liking it so yeah subscribe if you enjoy this kind of thing subscribe and watch out for my next video I said I I’ll be splitting my time between Darlington area and CA Eden Valley hopefully we get some decent weather still we’ve only uh had a week of good weather so far in [Music] 2024 so thanks so much again for watching all the best and I shall see you on the next video [Music] [Music] a