Hello,
thanks to the very generous lend of a revolution bike trailer by SRD we spent a couple of weekends exploring routes with the trailer. I thought I'd share a couple of experiences with a 9 month old baby.
We started off with a very simple ride to Aberlady via a stop off in Crammond. Good route and well known by all - of course it got better once we got onto the Dalmeny estate, but there a few places where you have be quite careful about the width of the trailer - I have a mirror which helped a bit with that and on once occasion I did have to unhook - trying to reverse away from something is an awful idea with a trailer attached (predictably).
The revolution trailer is sturdy and my daughter loved it - the only problem we found, which may be incompetence on my part, is that it is very hard to stop her falling asleep and falling over completely. I put the insert it from a pushchair we have in an attempt to simulate a car seat but still she was on her side within minutes and I felt a bit nervous about bigger bumps and her head so close to the side. I reckon with only slightly older children and more competence with the harness arrangement it would be fine.
In this picture you can see we struggled to get her to wear either helmet - the better one that SRD kindly donated, or this one which we had but isn't great - in the end I felt it was more dangerous to be round her neck and not actually protecting her head properly so we are currently going with no helmet.
When we were away in the desolate north east, we took advantage of the amazing network of old mining train lines that have been really sympathetically made into shared use paths. You can go for miles from Durham. Because my daughter seemed to love the trailer so much, we thought we'd buy one and I got really lucky while down there and bought a second hand Chariot Cougar from a family near Durham - it's not the newest but it has some nice features: it is a bit lighter than the revolution version; it has suspension and it can easily be turned into a buggy if you want to lock up the bikes and go for a walk. Most importantly it has a sort of racing harness type thing which when done up allows the baby to sleep happily upright - I stuffed a few cushions in as well but actually it's fine.
The suspension turns out to be quite good on Edinburgh's roads in fact. Experience with both trailers was great but I think for really little people the Chariot seems to offer a tiny bit more support.
I think that the fancier things like suspension only really matter to the parents. I don't think the kids care in my experience of both. I ended up not using helmets - I will go back to trying once the helmet sits better on my daughter's head. The chariot has a sort of recess which supposedly allows for this but in reality I think it only works for older children.
I suspect I may have appalled some people by not using a helmet - would be interested to know thoughts.
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