King Alfred’s way – Tyres – I know, I know, I know

Hiya,

So. Doing KAW this summer.

Bike is Cotic BFE MAX and will have a Nobby Nic up front.

Looking to get a low profile 2.6 as want a bit of extra give. Camping so will load it up a fair bit.

Options I’ve been considering include:

Schwalbe Wicked Will

Continental Ruban

Vittoria Barzo

Schwalbe Johnny Watts 365

Maxxis Rekon

Thoughts?

I did it on an Orange segment with 2.2 Maxxis Aspen’s, one puncture which sealed without stopping

I know the terrain quite well. I might be riding 50mm terrano dries on my gravel bikes on it this summer, if it stays dry. I think you could do Mezcals front and rear . I don’t really know the other tyres

Vittoria Mezcal 2.6. Not great in mud bt very freerolling.

Maxxis Rekon would be way overkill on the KAW in summer, even Rekon Race which has shorter knobs probably would be, I’d go even slicker than that. Bear in mind there are long road sections and very little challenging technical terrain.

Interesting.

I just watched this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX_uhdP3SM0&feature=youtu.be

Have me more of an idea of what I’m looking at.

I see it’s a about 20% on road.

Think I’m going to go a bit more mtb rather than the hybrid Conti and Schwalbe options…

We did it in the autumn. It hadn’t got ‘proper’ muddy yet but was damp about and the second half of the last day was torrential. I used Rekon front Aspen rear.

Unless I knew it was going to be muddy I don’t think I’d want to carry around anything draggier.  If i was doing it in the expectation of dry and I had one available I’d definitely stick something faster like a mezcal on the front.

What about Ikon rear and something like ardent race up front? I live near part of KAW and use that combo

Doing it on a CX bike in early September if I can get a rack to fit. Will be on Decathlon’s Gravel Light 38c tyres because that is what I have.

It’s very weather dependent. I used my mtb with Nobby Nics and was glad of the extra traction on damp chalk. Slower on the road of course, but I wasn’t trying to break any records.