All tyres listed below meet F.I.M. regulations and are road legal

                                                             Trail Review

The Avon Distanzia is by no means a new tyre but it is still able to hold its own by being the only proper road-biased tail tyre for bikes like the Honda Africa Transalp.

It is a good all-round performer in both wet and dry and on a veriety of grounds from road to medium terrain.

The Distanzia is the only trail-type tyre to be available in supermoto sizes.

The Battlewing is an off road looking tyre that is actually a pure road tyre. Bridgestone designed it to be that way because at the time you had two choices - either the traditional trail wing which was basically a green-laning tyre which was at best a jack of all trades and master of none, or the other option was the Battlax BT-020 pure road tyre which didnt suit most trail bikes due to the road looking tread pattern and the fact that it handled differently to everything else (so it took getting used to). Now the battlewing is out and it takes all the tread design of the trail wing and adds that to an evoloution of the road technology used in the BT-020 trail tyres to create something rather special. it has the presence of the trail bike and the handling of a sports touring tyre.

This is the tyre for you if you want maximum off-road looks with half decent off-road ability but also half decent on-road ability too. the TKC-80 is essentually a moto-x design that has been tweeked to offer true on-road performance. If you think it looks familiar - that's because it was the tyre used by Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGreggor in "The Long Way Round" .

Ideally suited to bikes like the BMW GS (boy does it make the GS look evil!) this is as close to proper off road as you can go on a big adventure bike.

The TR-91 is Dunlop's take on the big adventure tyre scene and its not a bad tyre at all, the main problem Dunlop has here is that there are other tyres that are just as good that have been out longer and they are tried and trusted tyres so the dunlop has a lot to do in terms of all-round ability. At present customer feedback on this tyre is minimal at best.

Metzeler's Tourance EXP is the new version of the ever popular Tourance original, a tyre which is still regarded as the tyre from which all trail tyres are judged.

The new EXP version is a more road biased tyre using a completely new compound, revised tread pattern and of course it needs to live up to a huge reputation that its predecessor made for itself. Well as far as on-road ability goes it does very well but this is where that ends. by making it more road biased they have lost the appeal of a true green-laning tyre which the original had to its advantage. If you liked the original and never went off-road then this tyre could well be a great upgrade, if not then it will be a bit of a let down - the original is still available though.

The 6-Days is a tyre for people who like to get a bit more serious off-road. It is F.I.M. approved (road legal), dont expect it to last long on the road though.

It is a very capable Enduro tyre that has been designed to be adaptable to any terrain - and does it well!

The 6-Days has been used in major competition level by many top riders including Ivan Cervantes (KTM Factory team) and Mika Ahola (HM Honda Factory team).

Michelin Anakee was the main rival to the Metzeler Tourance and the two tyres were very similar even down to the tread pattern. Where the Tourance has now changed its design the Anakee has kept the look of the original using the idea of "if it ain't broke don't fix it". The Anakee 2 has now got better all-round benefits of better grip and longer tread life by using the latest technology that they use in their road tyres.

The Anakee is a dual purpose tyre that can cope with roads and green laning fairly well and doesnt try too hard to do too much - it is a "what it says on the tin" tyre and is one of the favoured tyre among the adventure biking fraternity.

Michelin's Enduro Comp has been out for a while now but remains as one of the favourites to have due to the research that went into making it.

It is F.I.M. approved (road legal) and is recognised as a very good enduro tyre by many.

Until recently the Enduro comp was the best road legal competition level enduro tyre available and still remains among the top tyres to use.

The Scorpion Pro is basically pirelli's version of the 6-days extreme by metzeler. It features a slightly different tread pattern which is just off the pace of the 6-Days in terms of all round ability. As Pirelli own metzeler they share technology to an extent and as such ther is not a huge difference at all.

If you are road riding then the pirelli would be slightly better due to the heavy ammount of central tread giving slightly more stability on a solid surface.