Cannondale Touring Bikes

Cannondale have been making touring bikes since 1983. Their reputation amongst road bikes is very good, but, amongst touring bikes they are less well known.

Cannondale Trekking Conquest

The basic Cannondale touring bike starts from under £700. It uses a Cannondale Si trekking Lite frame and Shimano Doere groupset. The triple chainset of 48, 36 26 combined with a rear cassette of 31 should be enough for lumbering up most climbs, even with heavy panniers.

Cannondale Trekking Conquest at Evans

The rest of the spec is on the basic side. For example, brakes are Shimano BR-M422. The next model up the Trekking Ultra offers Magura hydraullic brakes, useful for descents with heavy panniers.

For under £1,300 you can also get a super light version of the Trekking model, it comes with a superlite frame and improved accessories for helping to reduce weight. On the official Cannondale website, they don’t mention the weight of the bikes, saying your better off going to a local shop and getting the feel of it.

Cannondale Touring Classic

The Cannondale Touring classic is around £1,400. It comes with a 10sp Shimano 105 groupset. Some tourers are suspicious of the reliability of a 10 speed groupset. (A 10 speed is narrower so possibly more likely to create problems under stress). Also the lowest groupset is 30 chainring on front and 27 on rear cassette. you may want to adjust this to a lower gear ratio for steeper climbing environments.

The frame is an original USA handmade traveller frame.

Cannondale Touring Rolhoff

If you really want to splash out and get a top of the range touring bike the Cannondale Touring Rolhoff comes with many nice features such as the unique Rolhoff gear hub, which gives a great range of gear speeds with minimum maintenance and effort. You just need a single chainring on the front, and all gears can be reached through a simple switch of handlebars. However, it is close to £2,600

• Touring Bikes at Evans Cycles
• Cannondale Touring Bikes at Evans Cycles

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