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I do regularly use a pannier - mounted off-side for road presence - so as you say I probably wouldn't get much of a view.

The bike has a throttle, opening that and pedalling hard from rest should give you good acceleration. Or at least, as good as you will get from any remotely legal ebike.

I tried a front hub D Cycle, as sold by Halfords. Hard to quantify the power, but it had more poke than my Brompton Nano. The EBCO bikes - also as sold by Halfords - pull reasonably well. Quality, for about £1,000, looks good to me. The OP doesn't give his exact weight, but '100kg+' in the...

Nice bike, plenty of fun to be had on that. A legal eMTB is a good purchase for many reasons, not least because you will be in a similar performance zone to your mates, enabling you to take full part in the activities.

Many miles over a couple of years on Bosch bikes got me a bit fitter, but I was disappointed it didn't do a bit more. Contrast that with the last few weeks when I've mostly been using my Cannondale. I am noticeably stronger for cycling. The Rose now feels like a different bike, mostly due I...

I don't record mileage, must be a couple of thousand by now, maybe more. Croxden does record mileage, he has done, I think, 6,000 plus. Both batteries still in tip top condition. As night follows day, they must fail at some point. But three years and 100 per cent suggests that day will be a...

In those circumstances, I agree you are well short on range. Perhaps the battery has suffered from little use by the last owner. Only a battery capacity test will give you a definitive answer.

Woosh - and I believe Kudos - quote a service life of two to three years. I've had my original three-year-old Bosch battery tested and it showed 100 per cent. Croxden - who has thrashed the Bosch battery on his Delite over many thousands of miles - recently had his battery tested and it was...

Leaving aside full sus, you are right about 29ers being able to steamroller over anything. One of the MTB mags did a long test comparing the three wheel sizes, 26", 650b and 29er. Their conclusion was the 29er was fastest over the trail. The 26" scored on agility, but that didn't make up for...

Decline in capacity over service life may come into it - the bike is secondhand. Seems to me some Chinese batteries lose their full capacity quite quickly.

I wonder if some of the Chinese batteries are a bit ambitious when it comes to quoted capacity. In any case, the Sirocco CD is 10ah so you may not get much more than 25 miles out of it on full assistance. Eighteen miles with some capacity remaining could be about right.

Rain early here but now dry, so I shall have one of my usual trundles along the C2C path a bit later.

Bar ends on flat bars are good because they allow a change of hand position. I had them on the Rose, but had to remove them to fit a bar end mirror. Result is I now get numb hands when I didn't before. Palm shaped grips are also worth having. Relaxing each hand in turn by riding one handed...

Certainly is tricky. The helmet, while protecting on impact, can 'catch' on something during the crash. Some reports of helmets causing neck injuries because of friction with the road surface.

Mentioning helmets is like mentioning the war in some cycling circles, but since two of you appear to have got away with doing so.... I don't wear one because I think there is a low risk of bad injury riding at 10/12mph on a cycle path. I would wear one if I did any proper off-roading like...

I have the same motor on my two bikes as on the Haibike you tried. You could put a dongle on it, as I have on one of mine. All the dongle does is remove the speed restriction, it doesn't add any power. But it does mean you can pedal at faster speeds, if you are fit enough and have the...

The 500wh battery is on the way. Being Bosch, it won't be cheap - 800 euro was mentioned when Bosch launched the 2016 kit.

I have an acquaintance who is a keen mountain biker. He has a couple of £2K+ mountain bikes and then bought a titanium framed fat bike for even more money. He tells me the fat bike is a bit slower on well made easy trails, but overall he now prefers it to his other bikes. As Sherman says, it...

Before you build your mega-watt contraption, I suggest you have a word with your mountain biking mates to see how it might be received. Lots of hostility from mountain bikers towards ebikes, particularly over-powered ones. Right or wrongly, push bike mountain bikers view ebikes as motorbikes...

I did 28 miles yesterday on the Rose from Consett in County Durham to Stanhope and back. Eco all the way, apart from the steep climb at Crawleyside, which I thrashed up on turbo. It's quite a pull, but there was no detectable heat from the motor at the top. Still three bars left on the...