Impressive cycling on an obviously good machine. It really is a beautiful island and you certainly had wonderful skies for the photography.
Hilda is absolutely brilliant. As you switch on the assist you feel a little surge, and pedalling just gets easier. I'm going up gradients that would have had my heart sinking on my other bike, even 50 years ago. You get three assist levels though, and that's it. No more, and when you're in the lowest gear (1:1) and maximum assist, that's your lot. No more oomph. If the gradient doesn't go on for too long I can buckle down and get to the top, but after a bit, or if it's really steep, my legs are going to give out.
The trick is to try to keep going over the summit of the rise and stop where the gradient is shallower. Have a rest, have a drink, take a photo or two, and the shallow gradient makes it possible to get on and get going again. But if the steep gradient is too long then I have to stop on the gradient, and then it's necessary to walk to the next shallower part.
The debacle of the B862 up the side of Loch Ness was instructive. Without the assist it was two hours of mostly walking, and absolutely whacked by the time I got to the top, versus half an hour with no walking and only three rest stops, with the assist on. Hilda makes an
enormous difference. On Arran, too, I covered almost 70 miles in two days with only (I think) four short spells of walking and three rest stops. Total. That is officially amazing.
I also think, having driven it and having had an even closer look at the contours, that I could have got
to Brodick on the String Road without actually walking any of it. It's actually not quite as bad as the B862. I was pretty much right about Arran, it is within Hilda's capabilities - or rather my capabilities with Hilda - but it's on the edge. I'm still counting contour lines to see whether a road is doable, and having to make sure I take the shallower way up so I'm going down the scarp face. There are two roads I can see would be too much - the String Road west
out of Brodick, I wouldn't have tried it. I'd have had to re-think my plan (and possibly do exactly what I actually did). Ditto the equivalent section of the Ross Road, going west out of Lamlash, the road the woman I met had ridden up without turning a hair on her more powerful bike.
Last year, there were a couple of bits on the road to/from An Àird on Sleat, a 14% section of the Loch Mòrar road, and a 12% gradient on the way into Foyers that were an absolutely tedious slog to push Hilda up. As my ambitions grow, I want to be able to tackle things like that without the slog.
A lad at the Innerleithen bike shop said, "I just pedal quietly and let the bike pull me up." My thought when he said that was, that won't work with Hilda. Actually it does to a certain extent though - on moderate gradients it is possible to conserve energy by putting her in maximum assist and not pedalling hard. But it isn't going to work for the steep bits, the oomh isn't there.
When I got Hilda I genuinely thought that nothing more powerful than that was allowed on the road - even though you told me about the Aviemore bikes. I didn't understand about the manufacturers fudging the testing so that pretty much anything gets labelled as "250 watts continuous power" (and 1.5 kw peak power, they add under their breath, and nobody asks how long this peak can be sustainted). It was the woman in Glen Roy who got me wondering, and then the Innerleithen guys who explained it to me.
I genuinely don't know if I'd have decided to go where I'm going now if I'd known all that back when I bought Hilda, but I suspect not. I'd been on one e-bike for about 15 minutes at the Everything Electric show, on a relatively flat car park area, and this was an entirely new venture. I was concentrating on getting a bike I could definitely lift into the car, and not prepared to spend a great deal of money. (The Fiido I started looking at wasn't much more than £1,000, and I regarded another bike very like Hilda - a Specialised - which was about £2,500, as absolutely insanely more than I was prepared to pay.)
It took both the realisation of how utterly brilliant Hilda is on moderate hills, plus the realisation that I wanted to go up more challenging stuff (and the realisation that more powerful bikes are actully road legal), to make me reconsider. In 2024 I don't think there's any way I'd have been prepared to shell out the money I'm positively gagging to spend on it now. Or be so cavalier about whether or not I'll actually be able to get the bike in the car.
I wouldn't be without Hilda. I love the way I can take her on my usual bike runs round here without working up much of a sweat. I love the way I can just chuck her in the car in a minute or two without even taking a wheel off. I love the way that lets me cycle in Edinburgh with ease, despite the hills. I love the way she doesn't even look like an e-bike at a casual glance. I don't want to change her for a more powerful bike, I want a more powerful bike
as well. I'm prepared to take half an hour to get it in the car if necessary. I'm not prepared to give up the bike I can get in the car in a minute or two.
Off again in a few weeks to Loo, at property there. 
