How do the tyres feel?

We rode 300km across a range of road types during the day-long testing launch and on the big Adventure bikes the TrailRiders performed extremely well. Avon says that these tyres have been made for 90% on road and 10% off-road, to be fair to Avon that sounds about right in terms of how much actual off-roading most riders really do and we didn’t ride with the TrailRider offroad ourselves.

On road the TrailRiders impressed. No real warming up of the tyre was needed and as the speeds in Germany reached well in excess of 120mph the new tyres were very stable and predictable.

Outright grip was balanced and gave a high angle of lean, certainly on a par in terms of feel and performance with many sportbike tyres.

As for longevity, we didn’t see any signs of wear on the centre of the tread after our day of testing (high speeds for so long would normally show small tears in the centre tread but none were visible on the TrailRider. We’ll need months on these tyres to fully evaluate their wear rate but from the evidence of the launch wear level, these tyres should last very well.

I did have one moment with the TrailRider that showed how composed the rubber is. Chasing a lead rider at 120mph, the bike I was on was shaking its head as is the norm on big-front-wheel Adventure bikes. I turned the bike into a long left hander, crossing over a wide strip of overbanding as I did so. The tyres slid for a fraction of a second on the shiny tar then instantly composed themselves and we carried on. Full confidence in both tyre and speed for the rider, total feedback from the Avon TrailRider.