I did the same thing sometime ago as I live in a very hilly area. In this part of the world you are either climbing a hill or climbing a steeper hill! On some rides I climbed many hills and then turned around to retrace my path home, only to find that someone had turned the hills round too and I ended up climbing gradients that I did not remember freewheeling down on the way out! Swapping the cassette helped but I am considering reducing the size of the chainwheel to give me even lower gears. My Xootr Swift is my pleasure vehicle and I am more than happy to pootle along at between 12 and 15 mph. In the four years I have had the bike I have never used the top two gears out on the road and only tried 6th gear once on a slight (and rare) downhill stretch. I have a lightweight racing machine available if I want to tear up the tarmac but even then about 20 mph is my limit. If I need to travel faster I will go back to riding a Honda 750!

When I first bought the Swift I was not sure if eight gears would be enough, as my touring bike has 27. However, I can get by with 5 out of the available 8 so there is no problem. By reducing the chainwheel to 50 or 48 teeth I will be able to use all of the cogs and twiddle my way up a cliff!