The Ice Vortex recumbent trike in action. Photograph: Inspired Cycle Engineering

"That downhill section was great!" my friend Barry exclaimed, beaming. "It felt like I was doing the Cresta Run." And this was just a spin around a park. There was, however, a key difference – it was a ride on a recumbent.

Such machines, where the rider leans back on a full-size seat and pedals with their feet in front of them rather than beneath, have something of an image, at least in the UK, of being the preserve of a hobbyist niche. Certainly, when I'd previously seen them in London, more often than not the rider turned out to be a green-living – perhaps even dreadlocked – man of a certain age, often carting a bag of organic groceries.

Luckily, Ice, or Inspired Cycle Engineering, to give them their full name, were on hand to dispel my tired stereotypes. The Corwnall-based company makes a series of sleek and reassuringly high-tech recumbent bikes and trikes, most of which they sell overseas, particularly to US customers.

They lent me the particularly space-age Vortex, £2,500-plus of shininess, where even the seat is carbon fibre. It's a trike, with a pair of 20-inch wheels at the front and a full-size 700c road one on the back, meaning a novice like me could forget about balance and concentrate on mastering trying to steer with a narrow handlebar positioned somewhere down below my mid-thighs.

A first tentative test ride on a quiet local road brought the first recumbent revelation – people don't half stare. Children, in particular, could hardly look more aghast if you'd just paraded past them on a rhinoceros. On their website, Ice venture the theory that this novelty makes their machines safer to ride in traffic than their minimal height would indicate, as surprised drivers pay you more attention.

It's fair to say, though, that the Vortex, with its bum-scraping rider position, isn't built for the city commute. It's an open-road machine, one many buyers apparently use for long-distance touring.

A combination of time and logistics, sadly, meant the closest I got to this during the brief loan was some laps round the six-mile or so circumference of Richmond Park in west London, a popular club cyclist training route with a couple of steep, if brief, climbs. To bring a vestige of scientific rigour to the test run, Barry brought his normal road bike and we swapped machines every lap.

In general, recumbents are viewed as faster than traditional bikes as the low riding position is more aerodynamic. On the Vortex, however, this is partly negated by the trike's blunt front profile, and it was notably slower than the bike, particularly on hills, where the only option was to select a low gear and patiently spin those legs.

In compensation, it felt faster. Much faster. Skipping at speed down a hill and leaning against a corner with your buttocks about an inch from the tarmac is about as close as you can get to rediscovering the thrill your 10-year-old self experienced sledging on a tin tea tray. You can see why people get addicted.

A bit counter-intuitively, it's also extremely comfortable. "This feels like a bath chair," Barry said as he lowered himself down into the contoured seat for a first lap. "My biggest worry might be nodding off."

There was one more surprise to come: at the end of the ride we felt a whole series of unfamiliar aches. Recumbents use muscles in a different way to traditional bikes, it seems, perhaps partly explaining our relative slowness on the Vortex.

The verdict? I wouldn't swap my bike for it on a city commute. But if I had, say, a four week tour planned somewhere rural (and a sudden, if unlikely, deluge of cash for the trike and associated racks and panniers, also made by Ice) I could think of little better.