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
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@chrisonabike Mercedes was acceptable, but the second one (old Toyota people carrier/ex-taxi) was a prosecutable offence.
I wasn't saying that nor talking about people who say that. I said it was silly to claim that wearing a helmet indicates acceptance of dangerous driving and poor infrastructure. I choose to wear a helmet; I also regularly report dangerous driving to the police and correspond with councils and road authorities about ways infrastructure could be improved for cyclists. I rather doubt I'm the only helmet wearer who does so.
@JamieT (a pedant writes) she's a London Assembly member, not an MP.
@Rendel Harris ".....but the claim that wearing one is somehow to be accepting dangerous driving and poor infrastructure is silly." Not that silly. Demanding that cyclists wear a helmet is seen by many people as 'the answer' to cycling safety, so there's no need to put in infrastructure. The difference between infrastructure and helmets is that infrastructure works. Helmets are a distraction from what really works, and the more time we spend talking about them, the less time we spend on things that do work. Helmets should be consigned to the dustbin of history as a failed experiment, and we should cease even mentioning them.
@Mr Blackbird Hats off to George Hall My hat's not coming off- despite this touch of cycleway-washing, Hall still bears the Mark of Cain, until he repudiates his party altogether
Perhaps an article showing a) what is available in the uk as cargo bikes and) comments from real life scenarios from those already using bikes or cargo bikes as one gentleman has done in the comments. Perhaps road.cc could follow up with this. Even the London Assembly member said not every business should use cargo bikes but suggested a more nuanced approach suitable for certain trades or companies....
@mdavidford Clearly the end of the sentence got deleted by mistake and it's meant to finish "...devices in their pockets."