Written by Dr. Ian Philips
_{All photos taken by Dr. Ian Philips}

I’m going mountain biking for the weekend in the Lake District.  I’ve got to transport my mountain bike and my luggage. Usually, I’d put my bike and luggage in our van and drive there… But this time I’m trying to see if I can do things a little differently… with an e-cargo bike replacing the van.

Mountain biking is very car dependent… Well, to be fair, a lot of recreational cycling on whatever type of bike is, unfortunately, car dependent. It is pretty common to arrive in a mountain bike area to see most people arriving in vans and big cars.  Some people travel a long way to ride their bikes too. All of this contributes to the large and growing proportion of transport carbon emissions arising from leisure travel to rural areas¹. 

For this trip, I’ve borrowed an e-cargo bike  – A Tern GSD (part of our ELEVATE research project fleet). 

How does one pack a mountain bike on an e-cargo bike?

The first challenge is to put my mountain bike onto the large luggage rack at the back of the e-cargo bike.. I’ve taken off my wheels, and with the help of some plumbing pipe insulation and some straps, I’m attaching the mountain bike so that it doesn’t get damaged. I’ve still got plenty of space for my stuff – there are 2 huge panniers and a big front rack, too. The Tern is really adaptable. Before I attached my mountain bike there were seats that could carry two children on the back.

I have to ride about 25 somewhat hilly miles to Keswick. I’ve got a (for me) hard weekend of mountain biking ahead of me, so I don’t want tired legs when I get there. The bike gives me 4 Watts of motor assist for every 1 watt I put into pedalling, so it feels easy going up the hills, and cargo bikes are designed to be stable even when carrying heavy loads.

On my way I’m stopping off for a meeting with the Lake District National Park – In our ELEVATE research trials, quite a few of the e-cargo bike journeys participants made had several stops along the way and this “trip chaining” can be a more efficient way of getting around – it minimises the total distance we need to go. 

How did my friends react when they turned up in a van.. and I was on an e-cargo bike?

Well, they were quite impressed that I rode there (40km) then did 2 days of mountain biking (40km and 1200m ascent on Saturday and 30 km and 900m ascent on Sunday) and then rode home (another 40km).  

“Mate , that is legendary” “Good effort!” . “that’s brilliant”.

It prompted conversations and questions: How much carbon does it save? – (I’m writing a research paper about this and did a conference presentation over the summer)… Does it help if 3 of us share a lift in one van? (Yes!!)

Adventuring by doing things differently

Just because I’ve done this, I’m not expecting that everyone will do this.  I had a go because it was a bit of an adventure, because I wanted to see if it could be done – If you like, I did it because it’s there. However, just because I can do it doesn’t mean everyone can do it.  In transport planning things have long been dominated by people’s current behaviour and as people mostly drive then we’ve ended up very car dependent which causes problems for our wallets, the climate and our health². But now we urgently need to change how we get around and how much we travel. We need to think about all the things that different people in different places could do. Not everyone lives close enough to the Lake District to use an e-bike to get there. Not everyone has access to an e-bike. However, some people might be able to get to their next biking trip travelling by train or bus. Even car sharing could help a bit. The point is to have an adventure, and think about what you could do differently.

---

Social media pages:

1. Philips I, Brown L, Cass N. 2024. E-bike use and ownership in the Lake District National-Park UK. Journal of Transport Geography.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.103813    ↩︎
2. Miner, P, Smith, B., Jani, A., McNeill, G., and Alfred Gathorne-Hardy,
   Car harm: A global review of automobility’s harm to people and the environment,
   Journal of Transport Geography, Volume 1150, 2024, 103817, ISSN 0966-6923, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.103817 ↩︎