Avenir Panniers
Reviewed by
Hikkerman
+109
July 18, 2012
These rear bike panniers are tough and fairly roomy. Easy mounting.
Pros
- Tough nylon
- Easy to mount straps
Cons
- Shoe hits bag unless mounted rearward
The bag is made very well with two large compartments and two smaller pockets (one each on each side). It is one piece that drapes over the rear rack and straps to the rack (four straps). I use it mostly on rail trails and roads and have not had any problems with stability.
It also has a bungee on the inside of each large compartment to hook to the rack. I haven't hooked the bungees because I can't find a place to hook them to on my Blackburn rack. As noted above, no problems with stability, though.
My only negative comment on this bag is that to aviod my shoes hitting the bag on each pedal stroke I have to slide it rearward more than I think it was intended to go. This centers the bag off the rack a little and I think on rough trail the bag might "flop" into the wheel spokes. But for my fairly mild rail trail/road trips it has worked very well.
I got this bag as a gift and, at first, thought they'd be too small for overnight trips (1380 cu. in.) but then it's easier to "go light" for me on a bike because you are never really far from a store or civilization. I had been trying to lighten my backpack recently and had not been too sucessful so here was my chance to try it on a bike trip.
It worked really well. Since the tent, sleeping bag/mattress goes on top of the rack anyway, all I needed inside the bags was tools, some food, my fold up solid fuel stove, an extra t-shirt and a few other odds and ends.
I love it! I gave it the three and one half stars because of the positioning problem with my shoes hitting the bag. If that issue was taken away I'd give it five stars.
Source: received it as a personal gift
