I’ve been riding my 2009 Raleigh Sojourn for a couple of weeks now. 

If you want the short version, read this paragraph and then go look at some pictures: This is a great bike to do almost everything. It’s a purpose-built tourer, with comfortable, all-day geometry and braze-ons galore. It’s fast over long distances, is geared low enough to climb anything, and can carry a whole lot. Not a lightweight and not a small bike, the Sojourn feels out of place weaving in and out of dense city traffic, but will get you, and everything you need to bring with you, anywhere you need to go. Wide tires, big clearances, and full fenders mean it’s equally at home on gravel and tow paths as it is on the road. For a rider that wants to do brisk-paced group rides and occasionally carry a load to work, one might be better served with its caliper-brake, skinny-tired cousin the CLUBMAN.

TECH AND SPEC:The Sojourn’s simple, clean lines stand out compared with the flash graphics and loud style of most modern road bikes. Only the faux top tube protector, reading “Sojourn,” and the headbadge with the classic Raleigh heron logo interrupt the plain Khaki tan of the frame and matching fork. Most noticable at a glance are the handlebars. They’re WTB Mountain Drop Road bars, which have a shallow, wide drop that’s perfect for commuting and touring. It’s somewhere between a traditional drop and a moustache bar, and offers another hand position without taking one away. Nice. One other note is that WTB’s website for some reason lists these bars as being “not compatible with bar end shifters.” As the Sojourn has bar-ends and the MDRbars, it’s clearly not true! The angle of the drops does make the barends exit pointing slightly outside the line of the bike’s travel, which increases the overal width of the bike and makes them more vulnerable to damage in a crash.

(UPDATE – WTB says that the stock bars are, indeed, incompatible with barend shifters. The OEM equipment on the Raleigh Sojourn is slightly different than that which is available aftermarket. — ed )

Road bikes with disc brakes are few and far between, but for the Pacific Northwest, they should not be. Yours Truly hadn’t ridden a disc-equipped bike before, and so expected a dramatic increase in stopping power. I was surprised, then, just how little I noticed the Avid BB5 mechanical disc brakes. Apart from a slight blade-on-whetstone dragging sound, the discs simply work. This is a big deal when I’m descending 15% Peasley Canyon Way, in the rain, with panniers of clothes and gear. They’re easy to modulate and progressive, and I expect the pads will last quite a bit longer than the wet-weather Koolstop pads I’d been using before. Additionally, I won’t eat rims as quickly, and if I did do a fully-loaded tour, I’d be happy not to risk overheating my tires down a big descent. Many racks are incompatible with disc brakes, but the Sojourn comes equipped with a heavyduty rack that bolts securely to the frame and clears the discs nicely.

Let’s get this part out of the way: yes, the bike is heavy. It has to be. It’s probably in the low thirty-something pound range, with racks and stuff. Whoever built the frame got to go to town with the brazing torch, though. The Sojourn sports a pump peg, a chain hanger, two spare spoke holders on the driveside chain stay, three bottle cage mounts, disc tabs, downtube cable guides, front and rear rack mounts, fender eyelets, and a clawfoot tub. I think the braze-ons put together weigh as much as a Scott Addict. You notice the weight when accelerating from a dead stop, but once you get rolling, the smoothness takes over. The 38mm Vittoria Randonneur tires roll reasonably well on road or gravel, have lots of puncture resistance, and reflective sidewalls, if you care about that.

The Shimano drivetrain is about as complex a mix as you can create from Big S’s substantial parts catalogue, but it works well: 9-speed Dura-Ace barends, RC-453 (Tiagra-level) Octalink triple crank and Tiagra front derailleur, with a Deore Megarange mountain bike rear derailleur which lets ‘em run a wide-ranging 11-34 SRAM cassette. The crank is both compact and triple, so it’s got 30/39/50 rings — a nice mix of gearing to climb anything, and a big ring that a heavy bike like that will actually use frequently. The downside is that there are big jumps in gears. For my purposes, using a bike like most use a car, I will probably switch to a 12-27 cassette to have more gear choices.

9-speed was probably the right choice for this bike, since it allowed the use of the mountain bike cassette and derailleur, but it also means that chains are easier to work with, the drivetrain is less sensitive to minor adjustment issues, and the 9-speed barends have a friction mode if all else fails. All of these things come in handy if you should suffer a mechanical problem in the middle of nowhere. So, too, will the included pair of spare spokes! Just remember to bring a wrench. While on the subject of field repairs, the Lezyne Pressure Drive pump, also included, is so awesome it’ll get a review on its own behalf. It’s a seriously good idea, retails for $35, and why didn’t anyone make these sooner?

(Flat tires simulated. No inner tubes were harmed in the production of this review.)

Yours Truly had never ridden a Brooks leather saddle before, but the Sojourn has a B-17, plus Brooks leather bartape. It’s comfortable enough for me! Saddle choice is of course a personal preference, and I’m not too picky, but, these things have legendary followings, even if they ought to be conditioned from time to time. Mostly I think the thing looks cool. You also get some high-quality pedals with metal toe clips that I promptly removed and put into a box in favor of the eternal Shimano M520 SPD MTB pedal. No bell, though. (The Raleigh One-Way has a bell. Ding!)What else?

Next: On the road

This was an independent review/post done by a Raleigh employee.  More of his adventures can be found on his blog.