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@Velocio
Hired bikes from https://www.lakedistrictbikes.com , they're located in Lowick.
Bikes are great, they had a good selection and I figured we'd go for Trek Rail. These are the fat-tyred pedal assist bikes. Took them for a 6 hour mostly off road ride yesterday on this route:
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/36576995
Verdict is that the lake District doesn't really have gravel... It has rocks. There's also a hell of a lot of steep up and steep down. The pedal assist helped us with the distance but on 16-20% ascents I'd argue that the weight of these bikes outweigh the benefits from pedal assist. The weight is also an issue when some of the bridleways have gates every few hundred metres.
Overall a ton of fun, but should've opted for much lighter non-pedal assist as it would have made both ascents and descents easier. There's a place in the world these bikes make sense but it's not the Lake District in the bits where we went. Grizedale Forest may have been the perfect spot for them, but we wanted to go on a longer ride on a mix of terrain.
Stats for the day 80km of riding with 2km of ascent with the ride to the start and from the end. The batteries just about held up but had to be in Eco a lot and we were conscious to turn off the pedal-assist on descents as we knew we were riding to the limits of the battery range. Needless to say, I'm aching all over today, also sunburnt, very happy with the day on the bikes but also looking forward to hiking boots which this landscape favour.
The second day of bike hire it rained constantly, so that cut short the day and we returned the bikes quite early and instead opted for a visit to Buttermere and the passes there to look at the waterfalls.
Would definitely recommend the bike hire.
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