Ebike obstacle overcome

Today I heard back from the Giant retailer in Imola (about 34km from Bologna) and they will rent me a battery for my Giant Revolt!

So all I have to do is to take my ebike to Italy without the battery, fit the rental battery and then return it at the end of the ride to the shop in Imola. I could even ride there without the battery since is is pancake flat the whole way, or I can catch a Regionale train.

This is great news and it makes me look forward even more to the mountains in central Italy. With a 500wH battery I can make easy going of a 1000m climb. Don't get me wrong - I like climbing and if the ebike was not possible then I would still look forward to the trip but having the ebike means that each day I arrive fresher and with more energy to explore the towns and villages where I stop.

International touring with an e-bike

 Right now it is not easy to take your ebike internationally. I'd love to take my Giant Revolt E+ Pro to Italy to ride, but the prohibitions on transporting Lithium batteries make this effectively impossible.

So as a workaround I am trying to find a bike shop in Italy that will rent me a battery for the three or four weeks. It seems like it should be a good deal for them... after all if they are hiring out Giant ebikes then there is a good chance that they would appreciate having one or more spare batteries in stock. Right now I have not found anyone but I will keep trying.

The fallback position is to take my non-electric touring bike, which is more than capable for the task, just less fun! It has been to Lecce before :-)

The header image

The small town of Longiano in Emilia-Romagna, taken on my Italy Coast to Coast ride that I did with a friend in 2014.

This is not on our planned route but is fairly typical of Italian hilltop towns that we will see and explore on the planned trip.

The end of the beginning

This blog will be the "one stop shop" for planning the cycle trip and for blogging the actual trip (if it ever happens). This is a departure from previous practice where the planning was done in Google Sites and then I blogged the trip in Blogger.

Planning in Google Sites is not quite so conducive to taking feedback from others so that is why I have changed to this new approach.

• I have built a set of pages which will be relatively static that contain the planning information. These are visible in the footer.
• Files for download (currently just GPX files) are also in the footer.

Behind the scenes there are some Google Sheets as well but all the useful information from them is presented in the Blogger pages.

So already the route is complete and the general logistics have been sorted. All we need now is for the COVID-19 situation to stabilise so I can confidently book tickets!