I am a self confessed thick bar tape hater, I don’t even like wearing gloves unless the temperatures really take a dip. So the concept of a cushioned bar tape designed to provide “excellent damping” with 2.5mm thickness left me a bit cold.
Fitting was relatively easy, the tape doesn’t have much stretch but is flexible enough to fit around the shifters without the need for cheat strip use and there’s plenty of it to fit my 44cm bars which have a generous flare to contend with too.
the tape has the usual sticky strip on the underside but its not too superglue like that you can’t unwind it from the bars to make adjustments if you need to when fitting. The tape comes with simple push in bar end plugs but i opted to use my own wedge plugs because they match the frame colour and I’m a tart! The tape does come in other colours, white, blue, red and green. Green would have been my prefered colour (see previous sentence).
The Ergon allroad tape has a patterned finish said to aid grip and looks pretty good too. After a month of riding, including in the rain I found that my fears about the thickness of the tape were unfounded. The tape has a pleasing squish and is grippy without being tacky even with bare hands. The 2.5mm thickness does give the feeling that it’s actually giving a little help with the vibration coming from the bike compared to my usual tape that was much thinner.
The Ergon Allroad bartape has survived very hot sun (yay!), dust, mud and quite a bit of sweat. It has coped well with being leaned on various cafe and pub walls, lots and lots of bramble brushing, hedgrow interfaces and being loaded into vehicles. Infact with a quick wash with soapy water it looks almost like it’s just been mounted to the bike.
Ergon pitch this tape for riding on all roads and they have a gravel specific tape that is 1mm thicker but I think if you are like me and don’t get on with the very thick bar tapes then this all you need. It’s up there with the premium bar tapes when it comes to price (£34.99 RRP) but performs well if not better than its competition
Ergon BT Allroad Bar tape, a tape for all roads and off roads, it’s expensive but the comfort and ability to brush off the rigors of off road riding is worth it.
you can find more details here ALLROAD BT this is not an affiliate link, although I don’t think Extra UK will want the tape back after many weeks of me gripping it!
UK GRAVEL COLLECTIVE 