Entries Tagged 'touring' ↓
August 16th, 2010 — touring
Dawes Mojave – ladies version.
Dawes Mojave is a popular trekking bike, great for getting around town, and a bit of light riding in the country, e.g. along canal paths. It comes set up to also be a comfortable commuter, with a lightweight alloy frame. It has plenty of gear choices so you don’t have to worry about inclines. It is also well presented with mudguards, rear panniers and comfortable saddle.
In terms of chic for around town, it is good without being ostentatious. Perhaps a front basket rather than rear panniers is considered cooler, but, panniers enable more to be carried, and it is designed for treking as opposed to purely town. Though, I bet many people end up using it in town as much as elsewhere.
The ladies version is designed with step through frame to make it easier to ride skirt. The other components are relatively good, with a base Shimano groupset offering satisfactory gearing. The simple linear spring V brakes are not the most powerful, but, I guess this is a bike not designed for aggressive riding around corners. Nevertheless for a good trekking bike, this could be an upgrade worth looking at.
At £330, the Dawes Mojave is a fairly priced bike. It does what it claims to do with no frills or unnecessary expense. It really comes across as a good allrounder – fair value, decent aesthetics, practical and easy to ride. This is likely to meet many people’s requirements for this kind of bike. Also for an extra £33, you can go for a front suspension upgrade.
Dawes Mojave at Evans Cycles
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Dawes Kalahari
Dawes Discovery
Dawes Mojave at Dawes Cycles
July 7th, 2009 — bikes, touring
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
Related
at Amazon.co.uk
at Amazon.com