Given the "Gravel Worlds" this week, the best gravel bike is actually a road bike.
You seen something like the Evil Chamois Hagar? Bit of a bastard child, but no toeverlap and a circa 66° HA.
OP: whereabouts do you live/ride?
Maybe a gravel bike doesn't "work" in your locality...?
When you say ‘good off road’ what do you mean? They’re not for singletrack or anything steep or interesting. They are for covering ground on fire roads, vehicle tracks and the like. You CAN ride singletrack or technical things on them if you want, but that’s done by people who just want the challenge. They’re not actually good at it.
Exactly this. Of course they are not as good on MTB off road stuff but that is not what they are for. They can do it, just as I do it on my brakeless fixed gear but I am not going to tell anyone my bike is ideal for it.
And if 'best' means fastest and a gravel bike is ridden on road and fire roads and the like the gravel bike will just simply be faster and in many cases a road bike with slightly bigger tyres will be faster (better?) still.
If best means more suitable to a particular rider who doesn't like drop bars, doesn't want to go at the optimum speed for their power then that bike may not be a gravel bike.
I also don’t get why road bikes in general have to be so short and twitchy when their job is by and large going very fast in straight or nearly straight lines.
All my road bikes are planted and stable at speeds up to the UK national speed limit. The are also very easy to change line and move around on.
Though, if you try to steer by sawing on the bars and are holding on for grim death, they do get a bit lively, but then, so do mountain bikes.
Even gravel double track was terrifying and I struggled to get any speed up for fear of all things bad
This surprises me even more, i've been riding on gravel roads on my road bike (23 or 25mm tyres, 90's race geo, rim brakes) for the last 15 years, as that what i have here, almost every road ride includes gravel and double track. I only swapped to a new school geo with bigger clearance because i wanted bigger tyres (32mm now) and discs for when it's hooling it down, i can also get studded tyres now. 50 kph is fine.
Did you have the saddle wedged right up your baackside and your knuckles grazing the front tyre?
even tow paths and long forest roads.
Nah, cross and gravel bikes are chunks faster than MTBs on trails like that.
I’ve owned a couple of gravel bikes over the years. Genesis Day One Disc, Cotic Escapade, NS RAG+ and Genesis Fugio. On the Marple canal my Stooge, Soul and now Titus Fireline are all just as fast but roughly a bazillion times more comfortable.
For anyone used to riding relatively modern MTB’s they just feel like road bikes if you don’t ride actual road bikes. I think they’re the best thing for commuting or just travelling about. Other than that not for me but your mileage may vary. I’d love a go on the Evil one though. Proper head angle and no toes scraping the front wheel. There’s just no need for that shit.
Given the “Gravel Worlds” this week, the best gravel bike is actually a road bike.
The best gravel race bike.
Doesn't mean it's best gravel bike for other rides.
🤔
It’s interesting how popular gravel bikes are given the number of posters on this thread who say they are rubbish. 🙄
Fat bikes a few years ago, single speed before that. Marketing innit!
The MinorTaur blue trail at CyB is a hoot on a gravel bike. Flicking the back wheel round, popping off little rises, accelerating hard out of corners without the weight of a bigger bike holding you back. It's good old fashioned fun, and that's what I ride bikes for.
I also enjoyed singlespeed for many years so maybe I am a marketeer's wet dream. Never rode a fat bike though.
Aye I’ve had 2 gravel bikes(sucked in by the spiel) thought the first maybe wasn’t gravelly enough and was shit. Got a newer up to date gravelly one it was just as shit !!
Hardtail for me 🙂
Had a few gravel bikes. Had tons of hardtails, including very light weight XC…..
For rides like the ridgeway and SDW, the gravel bike was fine. But it was much more comfortable on the 100mm hardtail. I don’t think there was much in it time wise.
I ride Delemere quite a lot, most of the singletrack is fine on the gravel bike, but again it’s quicker on the hardtail…..
But I have a 10 mile road ride to get to the trail and there’s tons of fire roads around Delemere, so the gravel bike makes a lot of sense, I just accept it’s limitations.
My gravel bike only takes 42mm tyres, I would like wider but fear that wider tyres will make the road side of my rides a boring slog.
I ride a cross bike as my 'gravel' and road bike.
Now it has tubeless and inserts I think it's really good for a lot of local singletrack that my mtb is slow on. Tighter corners, closer trees, lots of accelerations required. Also great in mud, muddy fields etc (of course!) Plus if you come across a set of steps, unrideable climb, styles etc it's so much easier to shoulder and carry
Wouldn't agree drop bar bikes are poopy off road but there is a learning curve
Separate road wheelset that swaps over to cx race wheels for the winter. Found I am very comfortable doing towpaths etc on 30c slicks
Trying to smash out a ride with lots of rocky bridleways on any drop bar, rigid bike with skinny tyres does seem a bit niche though!
My gravel bike is also a cx bike, 40c at the front 35c on the rear. I use it most weeks around Surrey hills and bridle ways and it’s fine. Did the Nirvana cycles killer loop on it on Sunday, wasn’t terrified at any point.
I have a fast hardtail (Canyon Grand Canyon) but haven’t really used it much and the full sus hasn’t been used in a couple of years. Cx gets much more use and is much nicer to get out to the trails on.
Tldr different people like different thing
Surely the answer is to balance different attributes?
And at the end of the day, any bike will do.
https://singletrackworld.com/shop/rough-stuff-fellowship-archives-2nd-edition/
I once bought a bike the wrong size & unsuited to the terrain I was riding, when I decided I'd been sucked in by marketing I went on a forum to seek solace in rubbishing a whole genre of bikes I don't understand.
I've ridden most of the mountain bike trails in & around Ladybower/ Hope Valley on my gravel bike, they weren't all fun or easy but now it's the only bike I have & perfect for the riding I do.
I don't get super enduro bikes, doesn't mean they are wrong or just for people too afraid to commit to DH.
For years a lot of people were searching for the best 'do it all bike'.IMHO gravel bikes are as close as you will get,but,and it's a big but,they also need to match the type of riding that you do most and available terrain.
Commuter (on crap roads) - Yes
Tourer - Yes
Winter road bike - Yes
Chain gangs ( with double chainring and skinny tyres) - Yes
Forest roads,canal paths and tame single track - Yes
*Downhill course - No
*Rock Gardens - No
*Lots of tree roots - No
*All depends on skilz and determination
😃
will make the road side of my rides a boring slog.
Isn’t that what road riding is supposed to be?
(Runs and hides).
All about compromise at the end of the day. I’ve stuck with a 130mm HT as my only bike. I hate riding on roads anyway so nothing is going to improve that aspect and I find a HT to be a lot comfier than anything else and the best all rounded for where I live. If I could afford I’d possibly get another gravel bike and start commuting and going for exploratory bimbles.
For those whining this thread was clearly started as a piss take so cheer up. Typical miserable roadies 😉
Fat bikes a few years ago, single speed before that. Marketing innit!
Clearly those bikes had their time in the sun, but they were only ever niche markets. Gravel bikes are all over the place. Something like a fat bike remains a curiosity.
Why do people who like their gravel bike, and the type of riding they do on their gravel bike, feel the need to "sell it" to those who don't?? If you don't like riding a skinny tyred, curly barred bike offroad, then don't ****ing buy one! Simple.
My "gravel bike" is actually called an Adventure Bike, cos the word gravel meant something you put on your driveway back when I bought it. I'd have it as my only bike, if that was something I had to do. But I don't give a toss what anyone else rides! 😛
Build something that works for you. For this type of riding I personally like old school mtb geo with haddlebars of my choice. Some wide semi slicks.
Sounds like you would like drops so take that route. Embrace the journey of creating the bike that works for you. Don't listen to the marketing ****arketers and pushing a solution.
What makes a 'gravel bike'?
Subjectives and compromises, adjusted to taste
Trying to smash out a ride with lots of rocky bridleways on any drop bar, rigid bike with skinny tyres does seem a bit niche though!
For me this is the thing - in parts of the country the rocky bridleways are a large portion of the trails.
I think I lucked out, because I fell for the marketing* and now have a bike that's perfect for me and my riding i.e. across fields, some road, bridleways and trails which are on the less technical side.
*I'd rather forget about the expensive mistake that was plus-sized tyres, but some love 'em.
90s mountain bike with 40mm slicks (triple chainset optional), Ritchey Kyote bars up front, and a set of bar ends mounted in the middle so that you can get all aero when you need to. You can probably be on the road for less than £200.
26 ain't dead!
What makes a ‘gravel bike’?
Objectively what I have learnt from this thread is "road bike with big tyres".
That was the main goal of the thread for and not to bash gravel bikes. ^ That was my interpretation on a quick test ride and looking at geo charts and I haven't seen anything here that challenges that.
All those who say they like the challenge of riding a gravel bike on some off-road bits I wonder if they may also "feel the trails come alive" with a rigid 29er? Maybe both work relative to whatever you are most used to and it becomes a question of bar preference more than anything.
Interestingly the Cycling Weekly review of the Evil gravel bike raised another point I had wondered about which was despite the edgy marketing and slack angles, it is still hard work off road due to the road position/ fit and drop bars which make it hard to get the front wheel out of holes and not just plough in to everything.
I think I've come to the conclusion that the gravel dream the marketeers are selling is BS for me and if I were looking at a non-technical off road route like say KAW then I'd be better suited to a rigid 29er with fast tyres and if I fancy some curly bar speed then I'd go full aero weenie with a modern "race" bike
DanW
Free Member
What makes a ‘gravel bike’?Objectively what I have learnt from this thread is “road bike with big tyres”.
quite a lot of gravel bikes now are like mountain bikes with dropped bars
Why do people who like their gravel bike, and the type of riding they do on their gravel bike, feel the need to “sell it” to those who don’t?? If you don’t like riding a skinny tyred, curly barred bike offroad, then don’t **** buy one! Simple.
This is probably half of it, but then I don't get why those who don't get on with them seem to want to knock them so much either. If I came on here saying I'd bought a 10 inch travel downhill bike, and I'd found it was rubbish at riding uphill and therefore it was rubbish and everyone who liked bikes like that was daft, I'd be roundly told to get in the sea, I suspect.
I like mine, it works for me. There's a lot of non-technical bridleways round the edge of fields round here linked up with drags on the road. I don't particularly like MTB bars for long stints on the road or non-technical bits, but others do *shrug*. I'd take the MTB for a weekend away in the Peak District, though...
personally I find road and gravel tracks are the dull bits in between the bits I enjoy riding, I’m lucky, where I ride there’s no end of the sort of riding I enjoy. I can’t see the point of downgrading the capability of the bike to make the dull bits more interesting. It just seems reductive [to me] I guess that may be different if one had different terrain.
Having said that I still think that HT with suspension and decent geometry would still be preferable to a rigid drop bar bike off road. I just think it’s a better tool for the job
Sometimes using the best tool for the job is not the point though.
I like full suss, hard tails, gravel bikes , road bikes etc. I even play with TT bikes.
I like riding the same trails on different types of bike and getting a slightly different experience.
I don’t like jumping doubles or gaps. I don’t heal as well as I did 30 years ago.
quite a lot of gravel bikes now are like mountain bikes with dropped bars
I’ve read this a few times but other than the Evil I’ve not seen anything that would fit this description unless we’re talking MTB’s from fifteen years ago. They’re still very much road bike leaning.
Sometimes using the best tool for the job is not the point though.
I have to say that I just don’t understand that philosophy of riding. It’s just a bit too “Calvinist ” for my taste.
Sometimes using the best tool for the job is not the point though.
I have to say that I just don’t understand that philosophy of riding. It’s just a bit too “Calvinist ” for my taste.
I agree, personally. Using something that's poorly designed for a task does not fill me with fun. If I want to make my riding harder I can just go faster and get more fun from the speed at the same time.
Re gravel bikes I think that the riding position that makes them good on road and fast stuff - head down road position - puts too much weight over the front wheel to be secure on technical things. So once you make the riding position higher and shorter you may as well be on an MTB. My rigid bike has steep angles but it's longer than a road bike (I sized up slightly by choosing large, I can usually choose between M and L) and I've chosen a relatively narrow flat bar and low stem. This makes it a true hybrid of a gravel bike and a modern MTB, and it's the kind of bike I think a lot of people would love. But they aren't being marketed as UK style adventure bikes - Salsa even stopped making them.
Having said that I still think that HT with suspension and decent geometry would still be preferable to a rigid drop bar bike off road. I just think it’s a better tool for the job
It is, but I really don't like riding suspension bikes on road much at all, even locked out. They're just not as positive feeling. FS frames flex more and and often front suspension doesn't fully lock out anyway.
The point for me is where I live. I want to ride a bike from my door, traffic free. I don't have any gnar trails from my door and roads are shit, so unless I'm specifically going out with some mates I don't particularly like riding the roads on my own. I do sometimes but prefer to be off road
What I do have on my doorstep is loads of rough but fairly flat canal tow paths and bridleways. Too rough for a road bike, (I've ridden these paths with 25, 28, 32, 35 & 40mm tyres. 35 upwards is ok but still a bit uncomfortable in places at 40mm) but not rough enough or hilly enough for a full on MTB. I had a gen 2 cotic Solaris with 100mm then 120mm suspension. This was fine to ride but I always thought rigid and drop bars would be better.
My gravel bike with 2.3" tyres is great for this sort of riding. I might try it with some swept back handle bars in the future as, I'm not wedded to drop bars, but the drops do get me into a nice position.
And that's it. Gravel bikes work where I am. A rigid or short HT would still be fine, but I like the racier nature of the gravel bike.
I don't really like the name gravel bike but it needs a name so....
I was chatting to a friend on a bike tour who was desperate to persuade me that a fast, really fast handling road bike was what I needed. It apparently ‘nips around’ and ‘bat of an eyelid and it’s turning’ yaddayadda.
He may be wrong about it being what you want, but he's bang on about the appeal of a proper road bike.
More relaxed "endurance" road bikes can just be a bit dull by comparison, IME. And wide tubeless tyres mean racy bikes are more comfortable than endurance bikes used to be anyway.
But if/when I get a gravel bike, I'll want something more relaxed and off-road focused - as I already have a nice sharp road bike.
All in all the whole topic of gravel bikes would be easy to rationalise if we were talking about optimised designs and we all had similar handling ability or to ride smooth+light, take the rough sections w/o getting beaten up etc.
I see 2 things crossing over with typical gravel bikes - underbiking is a valid way to get your kicks and road race bikes are a brilliantly optimised design. If you enjoy riding a light, agile drop bar bike fast on tarmac and find underbiking fun then mixing up those two in one ride is generally where these bikes find fans. It's what they are to me, YMMV. You might just want a comfier road bike which is equally valid since road bikes are mostly based on that optimised race design while few of us are optimised for actual road racing.
The aspects of gravel that I question are the marketing ads that clam full go-anywhere freedom and wide off-road or load carrying ability, or show steep shreddy terrain being ridden on them. There's more stretch there than the marketing of Enduro, DH and road bikes. The vast majority of gravel bikes I see being ridden on average byway/bridleway downhills are going very slowly ridden by riders who look precarious or even a bit scared. Whatever the rider skill, the bike format is a real handicap in those situations (but not nec a negative if underbiking appeals).
Funny thing is gravel bikes don't even fulfill the 'ATB' promise that mountain bikes of the 80s did imo - the marketing depts have gone too far in some cases. I know I rode trickier off-road terrain and faster downhill on my late 80s Marin than pretty much any gravel bike around now that isn't a flared bar 29er, and it wasn't just being younger and more fearless. Again YMMV.
Gravel bikes are all terrain bikes for the post-road bike boom era. Early MTBs were all-terrain bikes for the post-hippy era?
funkmasterp
Full Member
quite a lot of gravel bikes now are like mountain bikes with dropped barsI’ve read this a few times but other than the Evil I’ve not seen anything that would fit this description unless we’re talking MTB’s from fifteen years ago.
Mason Iso, Sonder Camino, Cotic Cascade, All City Gorilla, Salsa Fargo... something that can fit a 2.3 tyre in and with a slacker head angle
all of this does somewhat depend on what your interpretation of what a mountainbike needs to be
Head angle sub 68, low/sloping top-tube, short seat-tube and no toe overlap. The above would all fail on that alone I think.
As far as i am aware gravel bikes have their origins in the more rural areas of the US where in places they have very limited amounts of nice smooth well maintained tarmac roads, and instead have gravel roads, for reasons of economy, and these bikes were largely built to ride on them as they knackered proper road bikes, hence their name. They were never originally intended to ride single track or mtb trails. Bike companies have inevitably seen the chance to fire up their marketing departments to try and sell them to pretty much everyone, to mountain bikers as "Not the full MAMIL" road bike, and to roadies as Gnarlier road bike, compliments everyone's stable, and who doesn't want/need an n+1?
And at the end of the day those marketing departments have done their jobs very well, judging by the number of them that I see out. For me they suit my riding very well, I live about an hours ride from the SDW, I can ride on the road to the SDW, then ride on the SDW for a while and then get back on the road and ride home again. Doing the same ride on either the mtb or road bike that I have at my disposal is doable, but a bit of a chore.
If it suits your local area or the riding that you do, then get one, if it doesn't then don't. We don't all need the same thing and that is absolutely fine.
Why the **** does the head angle define if it's a mtb or not?
Didn’t say it defined it, just that’s what makes one in my opinion. Sub 68 just works better for me.
As per…
all of this does somewhat depend on what your interpretation of what a mountainbike needs to be
Why the **** does the head angle define if it’s a mtb or not?
Because the typical design parameters of an MTB include much steeper terrain than that of a gravel bike.
The red at Dalby is quite fun on a gravel bike with the exception of a couple of drops that are easy rolls on an MTB and “no thanks I value my wheels / chain ring / skin” on a gravel bike
That’s the rub though, on a fast HT, you see a sneaky trail when passing a wood, you can jump on and check it out, if it gets a bit rooty or rocky it’s ok, but on the gravel bike you’ve lost that option, you just keep going down the fire road having your soul sucked out of your brain
That's exactly the rub. I can go for an old fashioned 30-40 mile xc ride on my gravel bike - a type of ride that is not much fun on my own LLS MTBs - and when I see modern MTB trails I'll drop into them. Obviously, not every MTB track will be fun on a gravel bike, but most blue equivalents are fun. Equally, using your example, if you drop into an unknown trail on your HT then you might find yourself out of your depth very quickly as well - that's just the nature of MTBing, especially around here.
Those offering a HT as an alternative to a gravel bike aren't talking about modern LLS HTs, rather the sort with short travel forks and skinny tyres?
Because the typical design parameters of an MTB include much steeper terrain than that of a gravel bike.
But the typical user really really doesn't... they tilt the camera instead
But the typical user really really doesn’t…
The typical MTB user doesn't what?
Those offering a HT as an alternative to a gravel bike aren’t talking about modern LLS HTs, rather the sort with short travel forks and skinny tyres?
I cope fine on a modern HT with a Magic Mary up front and a Nobby Nic speed grip out back. Road riding for me is just a necessary evil to link up fun bits. Used it for all sorts. Yes it’s slower at some bits but still preferable to anything else seeing as though I can only have one bike.
