limitedstar.blogg.se - Problem child trailer

It’s also a good idea to try out at least two different trailers. Our main piece of advice on buying a trailer is to make sure that you (and your child) try it out first. Child lower in traffic, possibly exposed to more fumes.Carries luggage as well as two children.Mounting and dismounting bike not affected.

Stable: it doesn’t fall over even if the bike does, and centre of gravity isn’t raised.

They make the trailer slightly wider, but not as much as one might expect.

The Burley has bars around the outside of the wheel – I like these because they protect the wheels when I misjudge the width of a gap.

When the trailer is parked (empty, I hasten to add!), it can be blown over by strong gusts of wind.

The rain cover (a transparent cover for the mesh screen) is an optional extra, but essential, given our climate.

When the bike falls over, the trailer does not.

The Burley hitch is rather more complex-looking than most others, but easy to use once the knack is acquired, and seems very secure. This gives better ‘follow’ than a seat-tube attachment.

It fastens to the triangle at the bike’s rear wheel.

Folding it works very well – it quickly reduces to something that fits into a car boot.

It is brightly coloured and easily visible, with front and rear reflectors.

Interestingly, when I’m cycling without the trailer, I’ve become more assertive about taking the road space I need. Other road users (cars in particular) do seem to give us quite a wide berth. On the other hand, it’s a surprise how skittish the bike seems when it isn’t attached! Michael’s weight is noticeable when he’s in it, and the trailer does act as a drag when cycling into the wind. The bike’s handling isn’t affected as much as I might have expected.

In particular, most posts with ‘ears’ are too narrow (for example, the only useful access to Midsummer Common is the cattle grids). The main snag is that the trailer is too wide to fit through many of the obstacles that the council places at strategic points along cycle-paths. Some of the children at the nursery are clearly fascinated by it, and I quite often hear pedestrians say things like ‘Hey, there’s a kid in there.’ Michael appears to quite like it, and happily points to Daddy’s Bike and Michael’s Trailer. On the whole, the trailer has been a Good Thing.

We decided in the end on the Burley D’Lite, mainly led by our need to be able to fold it for storage (no longer so necessary in our new house with a garage). We spent a happy four hours being shown what sorts of trailers were available, and talking about the pros and cons of the various models. A short search of magazines showed that D.Tek in Little Thetford (run by Kevin Dunseath) claimed to have the best range of child trailers in the UK, so we decided to visit them. When we moved back to Cambridge, we decided that we preferred a child trailer to a child seat. This article was published in 1998, in Newsletter 18.