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For me, the spacers are in part for clearance over my daughter's head, I'd have it a bit lower otherwise. Have been tweaking setup since that photo and currently have 30mm under the stem, which gives bars roughly level with the saddle, with added rise coming from stem and bars. So yeah, spacers, but not an unholy amount.
The ride quality is fabulous. I was previously using a rigid alloy 29er as an off-road tourer then converted into dadbike and this is a vast improvement, I think mostly as the geometry is much better. Contact points all just feel very naturally in the right place, fairly upright position but enough weight over the front wheel to not feel sit-up-and-beg.
Feels plenty manoeuvrable and not at all tank like, even when pretty heavily loaded. I'm gonna take the rear rack off soon as the handling was still alright with two big panniers on the pizza rack plus stuff in basket - but this is for supermarket trips really rather than world tours.
Lower BB and 27.5 x 2.25" slick-ish tyres are glorious around town and light off road, and don't make the whole thing feel as long, high and just generally enormous as a 29er.
Would recommend. I got mine from Spa but I think they have them available for test ride at Woods if you can get down to the New Forest.
Only downside I can think of is it's not routed for an internal dropper. I didn't want to drill holes in my new frame so hunted around for a 27.2 externally routed one - there are some available but not loads of choice.
In fact I'm so happy with it that - and given I ride it more than my 'nice bike' - I'm currently jujjing it up a bit with Middleburns, MKS gamma, Ti stem etc.
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lemonade
se1derful
Sheeeeeit, that's pretty much exactly the layout I'd have, even down to the pizza rack.. Shame about the spacer stack, but that's a trend at the moment that's not going away.
What's the ride like?