What Is The Best Popular Touring Bike?

The wide range of tourism bicycles on offer, that is, bicycles built specifically to meet the needs of bicycle travelers, can be disconcerting. Therefore, it is not surprising that the most frequent question I receive is: "What is the best touring bike?"

The problem is that it is one of those questions without a quick and easy answer. Let's fix that first.
These are the variables that will be incorporated into your choice of tourism bicycle or, perhaps, bicycle packaging equipment. If the answer to each of them is not clear, it is time to stop reading about bicycles and return to the first principles.

Adventure Flat White

With a recommended price of £ 439.99, the cheapest tourist bike in the UK, the Adventure Flat White has a steel frame with all the features you expect, a basic but solid 14-speed transmission, fenders and a rear rack to start with undemanding and underloaded road routes near home.

Launched in 2015, it is relatively new to the market, but you can read a review of the bike in my blog right here. Scroll down at the end to read some helpful comments from bicycle owners who have used it for a longer time. excursions

Dawes Galaxy

At the basic end of the highly respected range of tourism bicycles by the British firm Dawes, is the Galaxy. Formerly known as Galaxy AL, it is based on the same design principles as the rest of the range, but with an aluminum frame and an economical Shimano Claris transmission. For 2019 there is a step-by-step frame option for cyclists with reduced mobility.

The Dawes Galaxy is one of the most widely available tourist bicycles in the UK street bike shops.

Ridgeback tour

The Tour, the cheapest of the Ridgeback tourism bike range, has much in common with its more expensive siblings, but with a cost-saving aluminum frame and a 24-speed Shimano Claris / Acera basic transmission train. Ridgeback has slowly increased the specifications (and, therefore, the RRP) of the Tour in recent years, placing it today at the top end of the low budget category.

Ridgeback mountain bikes are widely available in bicycle shops on the main street of the United Kingdom.

Ridgeback Panorama

The Ridgeback Panorama is a steel-framed tourist bike, equipped with disc brakes, with a durable selection of powertrain components extracted from the road and mountain bike ranges. Although it lacks a front shelf, its road-oriented frame places it well for fully loaded long-distance asphalt paths. It is also very tested: read Tim & Laura's detailed review of the Panorama after a 6,000-mile road test (they subsequently completed their trip around the world on the same bicycles).

Surly Disc Trucker

Earlier, when the jury had not yet ruled on disc brakes as a realistic and reliable tour option, Surly went ahead and produced a specific version of the Long Haul Trucker disc, the cunningly named Disc Trucker. Everything else is the same as the LHT: one of the most versatile and proven tour bikes on the planet.

Conclusion

All are priced within a couple of hundred pounds of each other. All have steel frames, wide gears, drop rods but with non-aggressive driving positions, luggage racks or at least rack support, hybrid transmissions cut from the middle of the mountain and road bike ranges of Shimano, and boring mounts (because he knows he will change the chair for his favorite, but he can't sell a bicycle without one). All are built primarily for paved roads but could handle a dirt track or two if necessary. So which one to choose is largely a matter of taste.