Beautiful day and a great result!

Yesterday, not today. Today we’ve got freezing fog and although it might be better at the bottom of the hill, today’s a day for staying in and keeping warm. But back to yesterday.

I little while ago I mentioned that I was thinking about getting hold of an electrically assisted bike, or an e-bike as they seem to be called, but that after Victor and I hit the road to go and see one in the Charente, I found out that the lady who was selling it had sold it to someone else in between my arranging to come and see it and actually getting there. But I hadn’t abandoned the idea and had kept my eye on LeBonCoin for the next bargain and I wasn’t to be disappointed.

For there was just what I was looking for with its battery ‘hors service’ ie clapped out, for only 120€! I could hardly believe it so contacted the seller only a few minutes after the ad had been posted. He replied saying that he had received lots of calls but that he would be at home yesterday morning for me to come and see it. ‘Home’ was in Millau, about 150 miles to the south of where I live, where the famous Millau Viaduct is located, the tallest bridge in the world designed by Sir Norman Foster and spanning the valley at a height of just about 1000 feet.

I’ve driven over it before and looking over the side at the town of Millau below is like looking out of one of my ULM’s cabin, but that wasn’t going to be possible during this trip as I’d be ending up in the town itself and hardly likely to see the viaduct as at this time of year it was likely to be shrouded in mist, as indeed proved to be the case.

But more to the point, the journey was going to take something like 3 hours 45 minutes in each direction, and as I would be making the trip alone, I wondered if I’d be up to it? Well, that thought lasted for about 5 seconds. I refuse to allow this stupid disease to stop me doing what I want to do, so I emptied the back of my car, put the rear seats down to flat and went off to bed to make sure I’d be ready for an early start.

I was awake, as usual just before my alarm went off, at around 05.45am and was therefore able to get away by 06.30am, in the pitch black and thick mist. Luckily the latter wasn’t sufficient to slow me down too much, and there was very little traffic on the road anyway at that hour, so I was able to push on as I needed to be at the seller’s house by about 10.30am.

Funnily enough, having been at Figeac-Livernon for the first time back in September to take pictures of the airfield, I found myself driving past it again, on my way to Rodez in the Aveyron and points south. Beyond Rodez I found myself climbing, eventually to a height of 870 metres, and on top the temperature was around -3 or -4 degrees Celsius and there was quite a bit of snow and banks of think mist. However, as I descended towards Millau, the temperature rose a bit, the mist cleared and the sun began to break through the cloud onto beautiful scenery.

I got to the seller’s house just after 10.15am, so my timing was perfect. While I was searching for his house, he saw me drive past and called me on my mobile and pretty soon thereafter I ws looking at his bike. Bikes, actually, as he also had his wife’s e-bike up for sale, also for the bargain price of 130€, but although I considered making an offer for the two, I decided against it as I really don’t need the hassle of reselling the second bike at this moment in time, nice as it was.

I rode the bike that I was interested in up the road and back again and said that I would like to buy it for the advertised price. Then the ‘Frenchman’ in him began to emerge. He said that he didn’t really want to sell it for 120€ as that would be without a battery, and that with the battery that was installed when I rode it, an ‘almost new’ one, the price would be 300€.

I’ve had this stroke pulled on me once before, when I bought a rotavator not long after I arrived in France, and the seller just point-blank increased the price. I asked about the ‘almost new’ battery, and with a flourish the seller produced the purchase invoice… dated 2014! ‘Yes’, he said, ‘But he’d only done about 2 kms with it and had made sure that every couple of months he had topped it up with the charger’.

I allowed myself a wry smile because I found this to be a fairly innovative definition of ‘almost new’, but as I’d already factored in the cost of a new battery, which I’ll return to in a moment, I said that I’d actually be very happy to buy the bike without the battery, which he could advertise separately on LeBonCoin.

His face fell a bit, but that was how the deal ended up and after I’d handed over 120€ in brand new notes out of the cash machine, we loaded the bike into the back of my car with its original dead battery fitted. And without charger, which I noticed that he’d also retained, but that didn’t matter as I knew that the new replacement that I’d lined up would come with a charger in any case.

And then it was time for the drive back, which I wasn’t looking forward to much after my experiences after my visit to Figeac, when I’d paid the price of feeling quite unwell afterwards. But in fact the drive back was an enormous pleasure. By that time the sun was ready to break through out of a clear blue sky the whole way back and was actually very hot as it shone through the side window onto my arm.

The scenery en-route was obviously not as pretty as in the summer, but the upside was that the level of traffic was much lower, and I found myself back home and still feeling pretty OK by 03.00pm

So what are my plans for my new (to me) e-bike? First a few pictures of it taken this morning. It was manufactured by Hilltecks, a premium quality French brand, and is their model HC-36V Plus, that is currently listed on their web site at a price of 1390€. Mine is obviously an earlier model that looks exactly the same and still comes with disk brakes front and rear, LED lights and a proper ‘scooter klaxon’, which you have to love. And it’s also in splendid condition, as the following shots show.

It comes with three levels of assistance – I think that the current model has more but as it has the same battery, this is pretty insignificant and is just a ‘promotional’ ploy I think, to keep up with the competition. It also has Shimano gears with a really snazzy finger-tip operating lever/button system that I’ve never seen before.

But now to the ‘biggie’ – the battery. I’d already done a search to investigate sourcing a new battery direct from China and it appeared that I could get one for around 150€ including delivery. ‘What a result that would be’, I thought, and decided to take the chance and go for it.

Here’s a shot of the battery that I popped off to the Chinese supplier after I’d already placed an order.

The supplier replied immediately with a big smiley saying that OK! the one I’d ordered is compatible. This was only this morning (I placed the order before going to bed last night) and it transpires after some more googling that the battery reference shown on the label in my shot (XH370-10J) is pretty much the standard e-bike battery.

My seller’s invoice shows that the ‘almost new one’ that he’d purchased back in 2014 cost him 350€ (yes, I know…). I could have got a direct replacement in silver for 158€ but instead went for a higher capacity model in black for 175€ – half the price of one bought here in France.

That means that I’ve got myself a super e-bike with a brand new battery for 295€ and that, dear reader, is what I do consider to be an excellent result 😀