Farewell Dawes Galaxy
"SLIDING DAWES" in Cycling Plus, March 2021 ( magazines get ahead of themselves ) - an article by Rob Ainsley. So, farewell Dawes Galaxy. Is the touring bike an endangered species? Or will things go full cycle? Scimitar Oryx; Candango Mouse; Aru Flying Fox; Dawes Galaxy… going, going, gone. (The first three are extinct/near-extinct mammals, not brand names. Though they do sound respectively like a gravel, folding and triathlon bike.) But yes. Dawes has discontinued the iconic tourer. No longer viable. It has gone to meet its frame maker in Taiwan. That’s sad. It was a nostalgic exemplar of the English-pattern steel touring bike, the sort you see in chirpy 1950s films: drop bars, comfy upright position, mudguards, rack, panniers. When ‘energy gel’ was the meat paste in sandwiches. But self-supported long-distance journeying, like nostalgia, isn’t what it was. Bikepackers cycle rackless now as they explore remote, unmanaged places, such as the bottom of their sad