That Giant Toughroad looks a nice bike, sensible spec, very versatile.

I’ve been looking at road bikes for winter use, everything I ride on the mtb locally on fitness type rides has turned to gloop/flooded out already.

Should probably just get some slicks and a rigid fork for the 29er…….. But that’s £150 gone, at least, Giant Defy 4 can be had for £350, and I get a new bike, plus could use it for charity sportives etc in summer….

I bought a Salsa El Mariachi frame for this kind of thing. It’s MTBey enough to do pretty much any sensible trail, including technical trails (where you do have to go a lot slower), but it’s superb on farm or forestry related stony tracks and trails. Steep angles and rigid fork make it a brilliant place to sit and pedal.

I have flat On One Fleegle Pro bars and currently Specialized purgatory/control tyres which are fairly large and fairly aggressive. I could easily run something smaller if I wanted to do more road.

Most of my longer exploring rides are 50/40/10 road/trail/singletrack, but where I live it’s quite rocky and steep so I will stick to bigger tyres. Of course it’s slower than a road bike but it’s much closer to that kind of speed than a 6″ FS.