exarkuhn15

Hi folks,

I'm traveling to Acadia National Park this week in Maine, and plan to do some riding. Will Bromptons work well on the carriage roads there?

My wife and I have Bromptons that we enjoy traveling with for the convenience, so we planned to bring those with us to do some riding on the Acadia carriage roads.

I just want to make sure that we don't need bigger wheeled bikes with fatter tires. Are the Bromptons going to be comfortable to ride on the unpaved carriage roads? I would rather bring the Bromptons than deal with the hassle of bringing our big bikes on the rack all the way from Boston as it's a lot easier to just toss the Bromptons in the trunk, but I want to make sure we're not going to find that the paths require fatter tires than what we have.

Thanks!

reppans

Not sure how often they maintain the trails, but the 2 times I've been through them, IMHO a Brompton with Marathon tires would be fine, if you don't mind getting them rather dusty. Here's my P8 with Big Apples on the carriage trails last fall (with some extra weight).

exarkuhn15

Thanks! You were right.

I just got back from Acadia, and they did perform quite well. My partner wasn't totally comfortable on the looser surfaces on the Bromptons, but she still rode on them just fine. We have the standard Brompton tires, and I made sure to bring my toolkit with pump and patch kit, just in case.

I was afraid the rocks on the path would be pretty large and sharp, but the pieces were pretty small. Plenty of gravel grinding experiences, where the tires make lots of noise and you get lots of popping sounds from little pebbles being shot out from under the tires, but I was just fine riding on the carriage paths. You slow down a bit, and make sure you don't try to turn sharply, but the Bromptons did just fine. I wouldn't bomb down the paths the way I saw some people doing with big knobby tires on full-sized bikes, but our bikes packed up into our trunk without a rack, so I'll take it!

Hope this info helps someone else.

blakcloud

Glad to hear it worked for you.

fourknees

Sounds like a great trip. Any pictures to share?