If the last 60,000km of bike touring has taught us anything, it’s that – within reason – the bicycle you ride doesn’t matter so much.
People have pedaled the globe on all sorts of contraptions from penny farthings to bikes with tin panniers. Our cheap second hand bikes have given us about 5,000km of happy cycling. You don’t need to spend a lot to have fun.
That said, we do have a soft spot for nice touring bikes so it didn’t take us long after moving to the Netherlands to notice that many Dutch bike tourists ride a Travelmaster from Dutch manufacturer Santos. After a year of living and cycling here, we’d talked to enough Santos riders to be convinced that these touring bikes were worth a serious look.
Off we went to the showroom (conveniently located not far from our house). The next week we placed an order for Santos Travelmaster touring bicycles, with 26″wheels and black anodized aluminum frames.
Keep reading our review of the Santos Travelmaster touring bicycle.