The Cleveland trailer is the top-of-the-range offering from Avenir, but it’s a bit of a no-frills affair and is certainly no lightweight.
It’s made of steel and canvas, with the main chassis based around a plastic tray which also forms the seat.
The seating arrangement inside is neat, with two sets of straps for fitting two kids side-by-side. A solo child can sit in the middle with a quick strap adjustment.
There are also a couple of small mesh pockets at the front on the inside, which are handy for a parent to store items – though a child wearing the harness can’t reach far enough forward to get at them (which could be a good thing…).
Assembly out of the box is relatively straightforward and everything fitted together easily, with all fasteners present and correct.
Fitting the trailer to the bike showed the shortcomings of the design, though. Where most trailers use a bracket that attaches to the rear dropout, the Cleveland uses a sprung clamp with a pinch bolt. This fits over your chainstay and is tightened by a large knob until the clamp grips the frame, but there are three main problems with this.
Firstly, it won’t tighten enough to fit skinny chainstay bikes; secondly, the clamp won’t fit onto steeds with large diameter chainstays, which includes most mountain bikes; then there’s the killer: the clamp attaches so close to the pedals that it’s near impossible not to hit it when pedalling. The only tester to not have this problem runs 165mm cranks, but even she struck her heel on the mounting occasionally.
The mounting issue is a shame, because the rest of the trailer is really quite good. The quick-release wheels are handy when you need to fold and store the trailer, and though the bearings had play in them when first unpacked they’re simple to adjust and service.
Other nice touches are that the trailer can be folded flat in under a minute and, with a loading capacity of 40kg, it can be used for lugging around more than just your kids.