Fitting Schwalbe tyres

Armed with my best swear words and tyre levers I set upon my quest of swapping our tyres around. We have been running the ever so brilliant Marathon Plus, which even after a good handful of miles don't look that worn. New Schwalbes are notoriously known to be a bar-steward to fit when new. But best of all they are what I call "fit and forget", so it is not often that you have to blaspheme. If you have ever tried to fit the Schwalbe Marathon Plus Evolution 26x1.00*, you will know that good amount of swearing will be required when prying them reluctantly onto the rims.

We learned while touring in New Zealand last year that we needed a wee bit more bite in our tyres when riding off road. I have been running the 700x35c (37-622) and Peli the 26x1.35 (35-559) and the only visit we had was when a stone hit the valve on my rear wheel.

So I ordered some 700x40c (42-622) and 26x2.00 (50-559) for our bikes, I might have gone too wide for Peli's tyres. But let's see how they're running after our little tour of Denmark which starts tomorrow. We did test them out yesterday on the Wandle Trail in South London. They felt heavy, especially the 26" which are over a kilo each, but then again we are not trying to beat the world record. They also felt more bouncy, so I'm sure that if we would go down some gravel tracks again we will not be shaken to bits like on the thinner tyres we were riding on.

The Schwalbe Marathon Plus Tour are more-or-less like the normal Marathon Plus but with the added extra tread: roughly another 4mm. Luckily with the extra width the new tyres were not hard to fit and I
didn't have to sound like a drunken Pirate while breaking some tyre levers.

So, let's see how they fair on the Danish roads which have their fair share of flints and broken glass.

Schwalbe Tyres Marathon Plus Tour

*) Just learnt that these tyres are build to be wheel chair tyres. But they work just great on a MTB-come-city-bike and over 3400 miles in London they have never let me down.