Hi!
As the thread title suggests i'm in Gloucester, I've decided to get an ebike as my family wagon, gas guzzling car is now only used for the commute (wife does 90% of the driving that involves kids). My commute isn't overly far by car, 9 or so miles, but anyone that has gone via the A4173 from Gloucester to Stroud will know that hill is not fuel efficiency friendly, then throw in the basically two miles of pot hole hell which results in a wheel alignment every 6 weeks or so then yeah.... not a happy wallet.
In all I worked out that with finance payments (which are quite low really), fuel, tax, insurance and maintenance my car is costing us around £300 a month to run - I know some people spend this and more on just car payments per month, but as a household with just one earner this kind of outgoing is one we could do without.
So.... I'm handing my car back to the finance company and making the move to the ebike! My commute is 14 or so miles one way, so 28 mile round trip from Gloucester to Stroud - it's a pretty nice commute, mainly along the canal tow paths and only goes onto an A road for about 1.5 miles and I come off the Stroud Waterways tow path right by my place of work (Over the road from Merrywalks Shopping centre in Stroud if anyone knows it).
The bike I'm looking at getting is the Cube Reaction Hybrid Pro 400 29er -
https://tinyurl.com/y893ceav
Also going to be getting the Cubeguard mudguards, although as we move into the dryer months may not use this a huge amount.
I'm hoping my commute will take an 1 hour to 1 hour 10 minutes. I'm not massively fit so perhaps as I get fitter I'll get there a bit quicker. I'm going to do a couple of trial runs before I go full time, and also to see if I would benefit from a suspension seat post for a more comfortable commute.
I'm a little apprehensive (if that's the correct word), it's very easy to just jump in the car and go but I'm hoping using an ebike will still mean I retain some of the freedom and flexibility I would lose if I just got the bus.