My Genesis Croix de Fer

I've found the CDF to feel a bit 'dead' in the handling aspect. Is this due to the large trail? Possibly the weight...
I understand the large trail is for stability. If I moved to a more rake fork would this help to liven up the bike and make it a bit more fun/nice to ride? How would this compromise the stability with front panniers?

The CdF is more or less a CX bike, it's design to be stable and easy to ride when going off road, which usually translate into a very stable and dead ride when on the road, despite your computer saying you're going at a good lick.

Increase the rake will make the bike feel more nimble, closer to a road bike than a CX, it'll likely to feel easier to ride with a front load with less input required in cornering (pothole become easier to avoid mid-cornering), the best part is that you get a less pronounced effect of the cross wind which was problematic with high trail bike.

You already went touring, you got a good idea of what you'll take next time, and what to ditch/bring, a bikepack set-up mean a huge amount of weight from the panniers and rack is removed replaced by a big dry bag designed to strap onto your bike.

I would wait a bit, we're getting more road bike with full hydraulic brakes and 11 speed that'll be very useful for touring, if you're handy with a spanner and able to look after a 10 speed chains, no reason why a 11 speed would not be idea.

I post this in another topic;

Trail = distance between axle and headtube;

Track bike typically have 65mm trail, quite a high trail for high speed stability but feel crap at low speed (ever wonder why people like putting higher pressure tyres on their track bike on the road? now you know).

Road bike typically have 57mm trail, not as high as a track, but still give you a nimble ride with a bit of stability, this is the de facto choice of trail.

Rando bike have a much lower trail, around 35mm, they're much quicker than road bike and can feel extremely nimble at high speed without a front load.

Add a front load, it slower the steering, but enough to make it more like a road bike but with the additional benefit of being able to micro-correct your steering more while cornering (hence handle better).

Jan Heine wrote it well in his blog about the discovery of the front-end geometries;

Then I started riding an old Alex Singer randonneur bike (see above) once in a while. The Singer surprised me: “Tricky” corners suddenly were less difficult. When I noticed a pothole too late, and thought that I would not be able to steer around it, I braced myself for the impact. To my surprise, the bike responded quickly enough to avoid the pothole. When I got tired, the Singer was easier to keep on a straight line – in fact, I could ride on the white painted “fog line” for miles with little concentration (see photo at the top of the post). Riding no-hands at moderate speeds was easier, too. This confused me: The Singer had “quicker,” more precise steering, yet it was more stable.

When I switched back to my normal bike after a single ride on the Singer, I found myself running wide in corners. I hit potholes that I thought I would miss. And the bike sometimes weaved unexpectedly when I was getting tired. Both bikes had a similar positions, both had handlebar bags, but something was different. To my surprise, the bike I rode all the time felt less intuitive than the new-to-me Singer.

That is when we started measuring geometries. We realized that the Singer’s geometry was anything but the “relaxed” geometry we had expected. The bike had a steep head angle and less trail than was common at the time.