A family camping cycle tour requires stuff, bulky stuff. Tent, sleeping bags and mats, cooking gear, food, clothes. For a tour across North Wales add really good waterproofs and tools in case you have to fix your bike at the least convenient point part way across a mountain. Normally this would involve each adult in the group carrying at least two large rear panniers and a bar bag at the front. But on this trip we had a Tern Orox, an electric cargo bike designed for carrying up to 180 kg off-road, potentially a huge amount of stuff.
Six of us set-out. Everything from my family of four went into the Tern Orox.
I even took some of my friend’s gear. And towed the children (in turn) up hill on the longer climbs. With two eight-year-old children and one approaching 70 man (me) we simply could not have taken on the Cycling UK Traws Eryri route without our electric mule.
Traws Eryri is aimed at mountain bikers and includes small roads, mountain tracks and woodland paths. These involve hundreds of meters of climbing each day. The CyclingUK guide suggests taking four days over the 200 km adventure across North Wales. We decided to take twice this time, travelling roughly 20 miles a day.
Our Orox had two large 800 Bosch batteries and with our massive load, I used around a third to a half of the capacity each day, as I was almost always cycling with one of the two highest level of assistance. I had no problem charging up batteries in the evening at our campsites.
The Bosch motor always provided me with enough help to deal with the steepest climbs we attempted, climbs that the others had to push their bikes up.
The only time I got stuck was when a deep rut stopped me turning my pedals. At this point – I later learnt – the Walk Assist function could have got me out of my ditch. I should have read the manual! As it was, my wife Cristina and friend Yan helped me haul the bike back on to a flatter part of the path.
Being on a new bike, I was initially pretty careful of downhill stretches, particularly when we were descending paths laid with fist-sized rocks, but I soon came to relax. The Orox has superb disc brakes (Magura 4-piston hydraulic brakes) and although it has no suspension, the 4” fat tyres pumped to 20psi just soaked up the bumps. The only time I had to stop was after the brakes over-heated after a two-mile downhill road dropping straight off the moor to the valley bottom on day four. It turned out this same road was about to be used by a succession of supercars – Maserati, Ferrari, etc – to try out their rocket power on the way up.
I was really impressed by the bikes handling, especially considering the amount we had loaded onto it.
The only time I dropped it was – embarrassingly – outside the Coop just after doing some shopping – when I had forgotten to turn the motor back on. The four bespoke pannier bags supplied with our bike were really well thought out. The capacity with the front rack was a vast 200 litres. The outer pannier covers were hardy and the waterproof inner linings could be pulled out enough to give them a proper clean at the end of the trip – to rinse out the accumulation of cake crumbs and similar. The attachments were really secure and the bags stayed precisely in place.
At the end of each day I checked over our bikes for bolts loosening, etc. We had front wheel cones coming undone, a broken mudguard stay, slipping seat – but nothing came adrift on the Orox. This bike is built to last. It is built with top-specification components and the further we went the more secure I felt about my mount.
Size is the great advantage of the Orox, but like other electric cargo bikes, it’s also a disadvantage, especially when it comes to transporting the bike to the start of the trail. The Orox is just half a wheel shorter than our Thorn tandem, and like our Tandem, we could not take it on the train. It is also too large for my usual bicycle carrying systems on the car – roof rack and tow bar mounted rack – so I used a trailer as I would with my own long tail cargo bike. With this, taking the Orox was very straight forward.
Our long-tail electric cargo bike is used for shopping and child transport on a daily basis.
A Tern Orox would readily fulfil that same function. But our bike could never manage the terrain the Orox took entirely in its stride. When it comes to replacing our current bike, I’ve now experienced a new possibility that could make my ebike riding even more fun.
Richard Scrase was provided with a Tern Orox S12 equipped with two batteries and full pannier set by Tern UK.
To learn more about ebikes, and to get involved in this cutting-edge industry, check out the EBIKE SUMMIT today, coming to Oxford on the 20th of September – https://www.ebikesummit.org/
