On our recent trip to France my wife's Tongxin-powered bike broke down, as I described in another post. This threatened to spoil our holiday, but luckily the tourist office in Angers was able to direct us to a company called Vert Event, who have electric bikes for hire.
The shop was centrally located and easy to find. The chap who ran it was very pleasant, and spoke fluent English, having lived in London in the past. We hired one of their bikes for a couple of days.
The bike was a fairly basic, heavy, old-fashioned model with solid steel frame, brushed hub motor, 10Ah lead acid battery and pedelec operation. While it wouldn't have been a great bike say for stop-starts in London, or for a hilly area, my wife enjoyed using it in the Loire, where the terrain was flat and lack of traffic meant few stops. With some top-up charging in restaurants and cafes, we managed to get almost 70km range on one day, with shorter rides on the next two days. It really made our trip being able to get the bike, and at a reasonable cost of €40
Vert Event also sells bikes. As well as the type we hired, they had a good stock of hub and Panasonic powered bikes by Giant and Gitanes, which looked similar to Dutch models in quality, levels of equipment and pricing. They've been going for about two years, and feel the market in France is now taking off. I would certainly recommend them for anyone in the Loire valley area who wants e-bikes for a day or two.
The shop was centrally located and easy to find. The chap who ran it was very pleasant, and spoke fluent English, having lived in London in the past. We hired one of their bikes for a couple of days.
The bike was a fairly basic, heavy, old-fashioned model with solid steel frame, brushed hub motor, 10Ah lead acid battery and pedelec operation. While it wouldn't have been a great bike say for stop-starts in London, or for a hilly area, my wife enjoyed using it in the Loire, where the terrain was flat and lack of traffic meant few stops. With some top-up charging in restaurants and cafes, we managed to get almost 70km range on one day, with shorter rides on the next two days. It really made our trip being able to get the bike, and at a reasonable cost of €40
Vert Event also sells bikes. As well as the type we hired, they had a good stock of hub and Panasonic powered bikes by Giant and Gitanes, which looked similar to Dutch models in quality, levels of equipment and pricing. They've been going for about two years, and feel the market in France is now taking off. I would certainly recommend them for anyone in the Loire valley area who wants e-bikes for a day or two.
