German expedition bike manufacturer Tout Terrain were showing a couple of interesting models at Eurobike for those of you who like to venture off the beaten track. The Silkroad is a Cromo-framed flat bar tourer with an integral rear rack – it claims to be able to carry 160kg, though you’d need more than the Rohloff hub’s 14 gears to get that amount of kit over anything more testing than a motorway bridge. The other components – DT swiss hubs, Middleburn cranks, a Brooks saddle and the lovely new Supernova E3 dynamo lights among them – are all high quality and durable kit. Tout Terrain claim the integrated rack does away with the usual weak points – the braze-ons and screws – of a rack system, and because it’s Cromo you can get it welded if it does break. The bike also features an asymmetric fork which they say balances the loads of the disc brake more evenly when the bike is loaded.
The second bike Tout Terrain were showing was a mad-looking concept FS tourer based on an integrated rack frame and a Maverick SC32 fork. The Upside-down Maverick is a good choice for a tourer in that the panniers can be mounted to the stanchions more easily, keeping the lower sprung section unweighted. The bike is designed in the same way at the rear; the rack is connected to the main unsprung frame and the wheel is suspended via a linkage system. It looked a bit overcomplicated but you could see the logic in it. Whether you’d take such a complex bike out into the wilderness is the big question. There’d be no pulling into the nearest garage to get the locals to service your forks…
Tout Terrain is distributed in the UK by Bikefix – www.bikefix.co.uk
Tout Terrain Cromo expedition bikes
Help us to bring you the best cycling content
If you’ve enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £1.99. Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist, independent reviews, impartial buying advice and more. Your subscription will help us to do more.
No Comments
Read more...
Read more...
Read more...
Latest Comments
"Landcross Road is now like a rat run, cars bomb through there. Surprised that there hasn’t been a smash there or somebody hasn’t been knocked down yet." Is that a vote for a modal filter there? Or - better - seeing how this could be fitted into a broader pattern of LTNs for residents? Or even starting a conversation on what they expect from travel locally / regionally and how could that be delivered. If the answer is - predictably - "like now but driving is more convenient" how much is that *really* going to cost / affect them going forward? Spoiler - they might well get lucky and have a few more years of "help for the hard- pressed motorist". (Particularly through the influence of Reform moving the conversation at a national level). But with more people here, more bills from people living longer (and all the other changes, the wars we're paying for...) the *real* costs of mass motoring may come back to bite pretty soon.
Scrapbook or it didn't happen?
This make me think of the early days of the bicycle - European countries which at the time still had prescriptive and quite restrictive views of female roles and appropriate behaviour and there were certainly outpouring of concern about the idea of women cycling. (Although I believe there was more acceptance of the zoo of "wheeled self-propelled contraptions" of the Victorian era). And ... maybe they were right in that perhaps this did lead (eventually) to some social liberalisation / young people mixing? Also thinking about an example the other way where NGOs working to help people have provided bicycles to eg. assist women bringing produce to market, only to find that these are all appropriated by men. (Perhaps a bit like "the man drives the car" which can still be seen to some extent in the UK). Of note is that Dutch women on average make more cycle trips than men. That's nothing to do with ebikes, but the efforts made (infra and built environment) to make driving not be the default for shorter trips. Plus women still do more of the admin / (child)care than men there.
Even better, there's a 4 hour rolling road block on this afternoon as the carnival parade travels through the town. Those on social media complaining about this work have known about it for months and despite what they may claim, they are not the silent majority but a vocal minority.
Indeed - and before *that* Abellio who had the franchise for Scotrail had bikes ("Bike and Go") at (a few) stations. At the time I didn't understand this, not being cognizant of the Dutch OV Fiets system which presumably this was based on. Unfortunately I don't think many others understood it either. Given the small numbers of people braving Scotland's unfriendly and inconvenient cycling environments it was a case of "too soon for the location". Didn't help that these were unpowered public hire bikes (so robust and heavy * ) and some of the places they were offered are hilly. Plus there's the UK expectation of people cycling on the road accelerating like a motor vehicle and flowing with the traffic. * Ones I tried were something like the Batavus Personal bike with all the trimmings, racks etc. They had been sensibly given them a large number of gears (7) for a hire bike and who knows what you could carry. But even just carrying me they were ponderous.
Yes, clearly it would have been preferable for him never to have ridden a bike and driven everywhere, then he could have ended up an obese, bitter and spiteful specimen stuffing his face with crisps and fizzy pop sitting in front of his keyboard in mummy's basement leaving stupid comments on other people's obituaries. That would have been a much better use of a life.
"The Voi bikes have been much more successful than their predecessor, the Just Eat Cycles run by Serco which ended in 2021." The predecessor to VOI bikes in Edinburgh was not - as your version says - Voi bikes.
Wow. It takes a very miserable person to come to a cycling website, read an obituary of a very sweet, smart, kind man, and think that it's a good opportunity to post some sarcastic drivel, with a smiley no less. I bet your mom is real proud of you. Good luck with your weird little personal vendetta, I guess.
@Dodonline "better off adding capacity to roads" is a well-documented means to increase the volume of traffic overall. If they are built, people drive on them. Take a look at Los Angeles or the US highway system.
@Jitensha Oni I see no misogyny in that abstract. Many communities around the world, particularly those focused on religious faith, demand that women act and dress in what others might see as outdated, unnecessary and restrictive ways. E-bikes might have benefits for such women.
