Ep 6: Hop on your eBike – cycling in Somerset, Weston-super-Mare

Tell me about UFO Bikes – where is it, when and why was it started?  

I’m Dominic and I founded UFO in Weston super Mare in 1997 – 26 years ago. Today I run eBike UFO from The Sovereign. We sell eBikes, and service and hire eBikes, but we also work on ordinary bikes as well.

My interest in Weston and the reason I came here was because of kites. I was a national stunt kite champion, and a kite buggy racer and I used to work for a wholesale kite company. I decided to go on my own and to open a kite shop. So I came to Weston because of the beach. I opened a kite shop and it was a few years before the kites were the main thing. But you have to move with the times, times have changed and now we sell eBikes.

It’s quite a change. Was there an interim of doing something else or was it straight from one to the other?

No, the first year we opened, inline skates were all the rage and we sold more inline skates than we did kites. The second year we sold Yo Yos  – there’ll be many in Weston in their mid-30s who remember Yo Yos fondly. We had a mad year with Yo Yos – that was in Meadow Street. After that, the kites started to take over with the sport kites, stunt kites and power kites and then we moved to the corner opposite Tesco’s Alexandra Parade, which is still our premises, and we hope to be doing more bike servicing there in the future.

But for the time being we’ve moved into The Sovereign with Super Weston and the Meanwhile Space project, so we’re hoping to bring some new life to The Sovereign with our eBikes.

You can’t push a bike through The Sovereign Centre, so how do people get access to you? 

We’ve got our own entrance, the seafront side of The Sovereign next to Can’t Dance Coffee, looking at the pier. People can bring their bikes in that entrance.

It sounds to me like you must be tapped into some kind of Zeitgeist, because you seem to be ahead of the curve with the next trending thing.

The eBike is all the rage with good reason. They really bring cycling into the 20th century, the ability to go up hills and carry cargo, and to go places where you wouldn’t have gone on a bicycle before is a real benefit. 

As for being ahead of the game, not really, I think I’m on the button. So I try to move with the times and keep really up-to-date. But the demand has to be there. I can’t generate the demand.

I’ve seen cargo bikes and they can be really huge. At the moment there’s the cargo bike that’s located at Hub Zero – a fridge of free stuff, which has been used to collect some of the waste food. It’s a monster – you’d think, I can’t pedal that and of course you wouldn’t have to because it has a motor attached to it.

Well, you do have to pedal these – these are all pedal-assist bikes, so they’re still very much about cycling. The point is that the ‘e’ is small, the electricity is there to assist you. It’s all about helping you when the cycling is harder than when you’ve got to go up the hill or into the wind in Weston. Or when you’re going to carry cargo, that’s where the ‘e’ assistance kicks in. 

A lot of people ask a very common question – ‘does it charge when you’re cycling?’ And the answer is simply, no. It’s much more like your mobile phone or your electric car. You charge it up and you use it.

It’s more likely that you’re going to use that for going longer distances, distances uphill and where you’ve got to carry quite a lot of stuff.

Absolutely. I live near Bristol airport, and I commute to work and that wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for having the ‘e’ assistance to get me back up the hill when I go home.

Where are some of the best places to cycle in Weston?

The best route we have currently is The Brean Down Way that runs along the promenade, past the golf course through the village of Uphill and out into the countryside from Uphill Boatyard. That’s a fantastic addition to Weston. 

For years, the holidaymakers coming to town have had to drive from Brean and Berrow. Now, it’s quicker by bike to get to Weston. That’s a fantastic asset for the town and a very pleasant ride. It can get quite busy, but the road is quite reasonable along there. There’s a new route coming, which we’re very excited about, which is the Pier to Pier Way, which will give us access to Clevedon.

At the moment, there’s no easy route for a cyclist to get to Clevedon, the most direct route is the motorway, there’s no coastal path. We’re looking forward to the opening of this new Pier to Pier route which will mean that you can cycle from Wick St Lawrence to Kingston Seymour. It will also give you much better access to the Strawberry Line, making it much safer to cycle and you don’t have to be on the main road.

The Strawberry Line has just had some new lighting put into the tunnels…

It has yes, Bristol Water has put in some lighting in the tunnel through the Mendips, which is fantastic. I believe that the Strawberry Line is going to be extended towards Draycott at the Cheddar end and next year, they’re planning an extension up to Clevedon as well. So the Strawberry Line is getting better and better too.

These are really nice places to go on a day out to get a bit of exercise, be in nature, see a little bit of the area. What happens if I don’t own a bike, how can I get around that?

Well, you could rent a bike. We rent bikes here from The Sovereign. We have a fleet of bikes that belong to the council, which are non-electric, which you can rent. We also have some of our own eBikes, which you can rent. 

*eBike UFO has a range of eBikes available to hire from £35 per half day. They also run an eBike experience from the shop every Saturday at 11am & 2pm to introduce new eBikers to the concept.  They can also help sort you out with an ordinary bike*

On the Strawberry Line, you can rent bikes, including adaptive bikes for disabled people as well from Yatton Station. There’s a cafe there, run by people with learning difficulties and a hire centre as well. 

At the other end of the Brean Down Way, there’s another hire centre and a cafe where you can hire bikes by the caravan parks as well. So there’s plenty of options to be able to rent a bike and enjoy these routes.

Tell me about some of the other offers that you have for cyclists. If you’ve got your grungy old bike out there and it’s getting a little bit rusty, do you solve these problems?

First of all, I’d recommend that you come along to one of our eBike experiences on a Saturday (11am and 2pm). We offer a free session where people can book in, we can only take limited numbers, but you can try a modern eBike and find out what it really has to offer. 

There’s a lot of misconceptions about how they work. They are actually very simple and a great joy to ride. But we also service and repair ordinary bikes. So you just need to book in with us. Or if you’ve just got a puncture or something small, pop in and we’ll try and sort you out straight away.

Tell us some of the interests that you have in Weston. What do you do for fun when you’re not at work?

I’m actually a bit of a baker. I’ve been baking sourdough for 15 years or so. I brew my own kombucha as well. I quite like cooking, so I spend quite a lot of time in the kitchen.

I’ve had the same starter going for more than 15 years and it’s got better over time. I think it’s partially practice.

Talking of food, what are some of your favourite places to eat out in Weston?

Loves always comes to mind. I’m not a vegetarian myself, I’m a flexitarian, but I do like good vegetarian food. I think that what Anna does at Loves Cafe and Sprout is fantastic. I really quite like Thailimeleaves. That’s a very nice restaurant and Sakura on the Boulevard, the Japanese place.

We are becoming famous for our Japanese food, we’ve got three Japanese places. What about coffee? You mentioned earlier Can’t Dance Coffee.

I am a coffee snob. I do like a decent coffee. And I have to say that at Can’t Dance Coffee, the coffee they use is superb and it’s really nice to have them as a neighbour. I pop in there in the morning and get my regular regular cup of coffee. If I’m feeling good, I might have a Mocha in the afternoon as well. 

The food in there is good as well, they do some nice dhal and some interesting soups.

You’re a shop owner in Weston. What shops do you think stand out in Weston to you?

I like places where the staff are there to serve you and they know their product. A shop that stood out to me for a long time is Outdoors and Active. If you go in there, they know what they’re talking about. They’ve got a good range of products to serve you with. I really appreciate that product knowledge. 

One of the things that I like to do in my spare time is to go on touring trips, taking a tent with me.

What’s the most underrated thing about Weston that you wish that people would get?

I think for me, the beach is a very special place. I used to live in the centre of Bristol and I came here and opened a kite shop, because I would come down to fly my kites on the beach. We’ve got a Wind Sports Zone at the far end of the beach.

You come down on a sunny day, even on a not so sunny day, and you’ll see the kite surfers out across the bay. You’ll see the swimmers in Weston Marine Lake. I think the seafront is fantastic.

Is there anything else of interest in Weston around cycling? How about the Brompton group and the stunt bike park?

There’s various little cycling clubs or friendly groups in Weston with their own niche. There’s a a small group that meets at the Seaton Restaurant once a month and they’re all Brompton enthusiasts. Occasionally they seem to dress up in some quite unusual clothing, but they’re very, very committed to their Brompton folding bicycles. It’s quite an amusing group. 

I don’t know if you’ve seen the bike jumps in Weston woods, they are terrifying. You can go down there and you can watch the young guys doing their crazy stunts on the jumps there.

There’s the appropriately-named ‘Old Gits’, who have been cycling for years and like to go off in a group and cycle together. But they don’t want anyone else to join them because they’re grumpy old gits. You could look them up, they’ve got their own website which says you can’t join.

Where can people find out more? 

You can visit us at ebikeufo.co.uk or you can pop into the store. We have free North Somerset cycle maps that show you all the cycle routes around Weston and there’s lots of them. Some of them are very good, some of them could be better. And we’re always happy to help and point people in the right direction.

What would you say you get asked most about eBikes?

One is ‘I’d like a light eBike’. So I say, would you like me to remove the motor or the battery? They’re not particularly light.

A very common question is ‘how fast do they go?’ They’re not particularly fast, unless you’re going down a steep hill. They’re all about helping you when cycling is harder -so going up hills and into headwinds. It’s not about speed, it’s about having a good average pace. 

The other thing is ‘how long does the battery last?’ I say about 10 or 12 years? Some of the modern Bosch eBikes that we sell, they can do 40,000 miles before you need to replace the battery. 

There’s lots of concerns about theft, I think that you have to take the same sort of attitude as you do with your car or any other valuable asset. Although you’re not required to have insurance to be on the road, I think it’s sensible to have your investment insured through your contents insurance or through a specialist insurer. And then to lock it appropriately for where you’re leaving it.

Some of the newest ones now are coming with some clever apps. they have trackers built into them. They have alarms built into them, they’ll notify you on your app, if someone interferes with your bike. The manufacturers are working towards making them harder for thieves to make money out of.

There’s still plenty of traditional cyclists who come in and think that eBikes are the spawn of the devil, but actually, when you realise that an eBike just enables you to do more with your bike than you could before, it’s a really positive thing.