All over the world, in towns, cities and the countryside, more people are enjoying the amazing benefits of e-bikes.
E-bikes help people ride further and faster than you would on a traditional bicycle. While most models look like a regular bike, e-bikes feature a motor and battery. This helps riders easily manage hills and travel longer distances without getting tired. Besides the health benefits for riders and the environmental benefits of being a more eco-friendly means of transport that reduces emissions and air pollution, e-bikes are also revolutionising the sports scene – breaking down barriers to enter into the beautiful sport of cycling. Quick to jump on the e-biking trend were local e-biker Danelle Dreyer and her husband Clinton, who has now also embraced e-biking as a recreational activity and hobby, despite owning a traditional bicycle. But what attracted them to e-biking in the first place?
Danelle explains: “One of the benefits of e-biking is that you don’t have to be very fit or be a professional cyclist to start riding. You still have to pedal, but the e-bike makes it much easier.” It is this benefit that makes cycling more accessible to newbies and gets more people to ride bicycles. “Clinton started cycling a year before me. One day I decided to ride with him, but I couldn’t keep up, because at that stage he had been training for a long time and was much fitter than me. In order for me to enjoy this hobby with my husband and keep up, I decided to invest in an e-bike,” Danelle explains. She headed down to the Circus Cycling Shoppe in Daleside, where seasoned cyclist and owner of Café du Cirque (a popular hangout for cyclists), Marcel de Lange, recommended an Italian-made Bianchi e-bike. “I eventually got the e-bike. This enabled me and Clinton to ride together on weekends. He rode on his traditional bicycle, while I rode on my e-bike, keeping up with him,” explains Danelle.
The e-bike impressed Clinton so much that he decided to invest in an e-bike of his own, despite owning a regular bike. Clinton got himself a hand-crafted e-bike from Pyga Industries, a local South African manufacturer of mountain bikes and e-bikes. “E-bikes makes it much easier to access the great sport of cycling and to enjoy it with others. It enables you to ride with others without the fear that you might not be able to keep up. You can ride so much further, and explore so much more,” Danelle concludes.
E-bikes: A growing trend to evolve healthy habits
Whether it be for recreational purposes or as a means of transport, the use of electrical bicycles (e-bikes) has grown tremendously over the past couple of years.
