Friday evening ponderings after a few beers in the sun so bear with me.
You have £6k to spend on an new gravel bike.
Not for racing, not for bike packing, just gravelling around and crap country lanes and bye ways/ bridle paths.
What would you go for?
A really nicely specced Secan and plenty of change
Just looked at the comfigurator, the bike with Force Xplr 13 speed and DT carbon wheels is under 4.5K
Secan if not loaded, they’re just lovely to ride. But for that money, I’d go enigma escape, simply stunning 😍
I didn't spend that much on my Secan and I've got xplr and 700c and 650b dynamo wheels. It's a very nice bike.
Of course you could go full custom with that budget or as above the Escape which I was also considering
Of course you could go full custom with that budget
I honestly wouldn't, I did and I'm regretting not just getting a Fairlight, or even just one of the new Scott Addicts which look great.
I'm glad I bought my Camino when I did. I like a long dropper so the move from 31.6 to 27.2 on the seat tube of the new one is a downer. I know it's not for everyone but I really want that large diameter seat tube.
I’ve been looking at gravel bikes again and have just bought one of the discount Secan frames on their site at the moment. I have one before, sold it and missed it ever since.
while I was looking for one it came down to this list of it helps you:
sour purple haze
stayer groadinger
secan
spa elan ti
Rodeo labs flanimal.
and the last and best one - curve Kevin, GRX+ or big kev. Curve bikes are absolutely beautiful and fit your budget perfectly.
Secan
Enigma
Reilly
Camino Ti (recommending what you have)
£6k may get you something sexy by Laverack
Common or garden choice: Specialized Diverge, you can get a carbon frame with GRX Di2 or SRAM Rival XPLR for £5500 (probably less if you shop around a bit)
A bit more of a connoisseur choice: Fairlight Secan or Mason Bokeh.
A mountain biker's choice: Cotic Escapade. GRX Di2 for <£5000, SRAM Force XPLR for a bit more.
I have a pinarello grevil f5 and I love it. I have also been looking at the ribble titanium cgr ti with full dura ace which looks good and is amazing value for money
A £960 adv 8.9, which might be even cheaper with black or British cycling membership until 15th June, special promo code.
I have a Giant Revolt and it's really good. I like that it's 2x. I don't like press fit but I can live with it. Mine was a third of your budget too.
That’s a very similar budget to what I’ve been looking at.
You really need to look at what you want not what other people tell you what they might want as the spectrum of bikes is so wide
However whatever you get you need 50mm + tyre clearance
I’ve gone for a Wilier Rave SLR ID2 as I wanted a road like gravel bike. You may not want that
£6k? No chance.
I'd get all I need for around half that. Or, a custom bike, still for less than £6k. But I wouldn't go for carbon or electronic gears so I'm easily pleased.
I gather that the Singular Kite is very well reviewed and if you want to be 'out there' and go 32" there's the Pteradactyl.
If you'll consider steel there's the Curtis G.O.A.T.
Pashley Roadfinder X
Huge choice of colours and some lovely details in the frame
6k does seem rather a lot for a curly bar rigid bike to be honest.
With that in mind I'd get 2 bikes - a Cotic Casdade for heavy gravel, and a modern endurance road bike (Endurace, Infinito etc) for gravelly roads.
I built up a used Cascade frame (some on sale now) with the Ghost carbon wheels from S&L and a Force/GX AXS mullet groupset and it's a little rocket.
6k does seem rather a lot for a curly bar rigid bike to be honest.
I was thinking that too - my suggestions above I had to choose the highest build options to get close to that!
My own gravel bike was half that price and still has Di2!
The budget was based on this Canyon which has caught my eye.
Thanks for all the other suggestions, I will be researching over the weekend.
Carbon and electronic shifting are my preferences.
CANYON.COM
The budget was based on this Canyon which has caught my eye.
Ah yes, a SRAM RED 13sp groupset would push the price up a bit!
The Grizl is really nice, I've got the e-bike version (and Canyon missed a trick by not calling it the Grizl:E!)
Just check the availability of any extras, especially proprietary ones. Canyon bikes are great but the (lack of) availability of components can be incredibly frustrating. I've never been able to get a range extender or the specific mudguards for my e-bike for example.
I have two Canyons and my experience with the proprietary bits have been the opposite of yous fortunately.
Sonder Camino Ti - or the Camino Al and spend the change on a really good trip. Not niche or s****y, but the geometry is absolutely sorted, the closest thing out there to a budget-priced Stigmata. Fab off road on chunkier stuff and super stable on road, but without feeling sluggish. Things like the Secan look nice and I love Cotics, but I'd rather have the Camino's slack head angle and short stem set-up. Or, I guess, a Stigmata, for extra s**** value, but I like the Camino Al for its underdog punchiness. Try a demo Camino if you can, I reckon you'll be blown away by just how composed it is off road.
Mason Bokeh are well liked , but not a carbon frame which you prefer or go off piste a bit with a Stigmata?
Not for racing, not for bike packing, just gravelling around and crap country lanes and bye ways/ bridle paths.
Is a gravel bike all you want? There's a law of diminishing returns with big spending on bikes and I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between a £3000 bike and a £6000 one - perhaps if you're a keen racer chasing marginal gains or a hardened traveller circumnavigating the globe, but for general gravelling around it seems an awful lot of money.
Could you not buy two bikes?
I have a Camino and it was decent when they were £300 frames but I'm not sure I'd wanna spend big money on a Sonder. Gravel Bikes are such a wide range you probably need to narrow it down more for everyone. As a few others have said, I'm not sure I'd need to spend £6k to get my dream gravel bike. Cotic Escapade if you like Steel could be an option?
I have a Grizl (the mk1 version) - it's taken me all over.
I'm not sure about the ECLIPS system, it sounds great, but if it breaks you'll be stuck. I'd be more inclined to retro fit some standard parts.
The Grizl is the more "adventure" focused of the Canyon offerings - the Grail maybe more fun for your use case? (but I tend to agree that 50mm is the minimum tyre clearance I'd want)
Now if you didn't want carbon, I'd be recommending a Mason Bokeh or a Ti something.
The Grizl is the more "adventure" focused of the Canyon offerings - the Grail maybe more fun for your use case? (but I tend to agree that 50mm is the minimum tyre clearance I'd want)
I have a Grail. It's a brilliant bike but what is going to become a factor further down the road is the very limited tyre clearance. 42mm on mine. It's amazing how quickly gravel bikes have gone up and up in tyre size.
doesn't really fit your brief as it's steel but if I had 6k for a gravel bike I'd buy one of those new escapades with some hope rx40s
UKGRAVELCO.COM Argon Dark Matter.
Test rode one at Dalby Grit and it was fantastic.
Not for racing, not for bike packing, just gravelling around and crap country lanes and bye ways/ bridle paths.
Is a gravel bike all you want? There's a law of diminishing returns with big spending on bikes and I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between a £3000 bike and a £6000 one - perhaps if you're a keen racer chasing marginal gains or a hardened traveller circumnavigating the globe, but for general gravelling around it seems an awful lot of money.
Could you not buy two bikes?
I’m still happy with my 3T exploro which I’ve had for like a zillion years,with various carbon wheels and metal ones in 650b and 700 flavours and personally I’d spend 3k and put the rest back for another one when it breaks.
(I’m Spain and have actual gravel and terrain that’s pant wettingly fun and never feel like I’m missing out out riding a 3ker as opposed to a 6ker they are all disposable consumer items )
Specialized Crux 4 are probably on sale at the moment. Custom build with a SRAM Red/Force AXS groupset. Carbon wheels from China. 45mm tyres.
Or wait and see what the new Time ADHX looks like (I expect one'll be released soon).
Argon 18 Dark Matter, the £4500 Rival spec one and spend a bit of the saving on a second set of Chinese carbon wheels (Elitewheels SLR Gravel at the budget end, ICAN G25 SL for a bit more or 9velo GV45 for premium - the latter have a 32mm wide internal rim width which the Dark Matter can take advantage of).
The above is basically what I did and no regrets at all, the Dark Matter is a really versatile all rounder. The Rival spec. is only let down by the wheels but they're good as a second set (I use them with the original 50mm RX Pros on for muddy conditions). Having a second (or more...) set of wheels allows you to ride the right tyres for the conditions (I have 2.25" Thunder Burts on one set and 45mm Hutchinson Caracal Race on another). SRAM 13sp cassettes are expensive though...
It does have a long reach, I needed the large for the stack height but had to switch the stem for a 20mm shorter one due to the reach (was a free swap at my LBS). I also swapped the cranks for 160mm Force (mostly as I wanted shorter than stock cranks but figured I'd may as well pay a bit more for the lighter carbon Force cranks at the same time).
we've just had a fantastic holiday riding our pair of Santa Cruz Stigmata and I honestly can't think of any way to improve the bike. Maybe some mounting points for load carrying could be useful. But they are wonderful to ride and handle easy MTB trails very adequately.
Argon 18 Dark Matter
They look really well made and are indeed very nice bikes . The anti matter is a more racey variant.
The only thing I think lets them down are the colours which are just a bit odd
As with BWD and others, the Camino is a properly sorted bike, the geometry is spot on, can get great spec for the money and the right cranklengths/bar widths as standard, rather than changing later. It's properly good value for money and rides brilliantly.
I love mine (the Alu), ride it loads, so obviously I've just bough a Stigmata to replace it - custom spec - if you buy the frame, already have some nice wheels and some finishing kit in the parts stores, you can get it spec'ed with Sram Force for about £5k - which is the same as the Rival of the peg.
In all seriousness, I was about to buy a Camino Ti, but by the time Alpkit had gotten around to responding to my request for a quote on custom spec, I'd fallen for the Stigmata, and not just because it comes in Purple
“Is a gravel bike all you want?”
I am lucky enough to already have a carbon full suss, a Ti LLS hardtail, a steel hardtail with a basic spec and full mudguards for the crap weather and a road bike that only gets used for indoor training.
So yes a just a gravel bike
I would also say Specialized Crux 4. Such a fun bike to ride and can easily be made into a very good road bike ( which is what I do in the winter with mine ). And some great deals about as the new version has just been released
I've got a Diverge STR, had it for 2 years, the only change is a dropper post and I love every ride. The ebike gets only one ride in three, the Pinarello road bike hasn't been used.
Last Monday I did my birthday "miles in clicks" which was 80% road. (73k) Today we did some fairly steep and clattery mountain bike cheeky stuff on Cannock Chase.
If I had to replace it I'd get the same again.
I would also agree with the comments about 50mm being the lower limit for tyre clearance.
Diverge STR is discontinued unfortunately
If it's just gravel you want then at your budget don't rule out suspension. I have no experience of the telescopic forks but I've had a Lauf Siegla for a few months and I absolutely love the leaf spring fork. It doesn't do quite the same job as an MTB fork but does just take the edge off the roughness of trails and add a bit of margin of error for line choices. For me it's letting me enjoy more of what I enjoy about gravel riding (getting to cool places away from cars, linking up quiet roads etc) and get less of what I don't enjoy (feeling shaken about and battered).
Previous Crux and spare road wheels. Two for one and a fabulous frame. My gravel is a classic titanium cross bike with 40 mm tyres and rim brakes. It gets me around Swinley OK and is sublime on road. If I wanted a replacement with discs it would be the last generation Crux.
Another Secan fancier or maybe a Ritchey outback (I just like the look of them), and then the budget would allow for top end GRX (2x is my preference) and two wheelsets.
I’m not a “steel is real” type, but I am certainly over Carbon now and Ti holds no interest for me.
I have a Camino and it was decent when they were £300 frames but I'm not sure I'd wanna spend big money on a Sonder.
Isn't that the whole point - you don't need to spend big money to have a bike that rides really well and actually there's a certain charm in a bike that punches way above its brand weight, which the Camino Al really does.
I love mine (the Alu), ride it loads, so obviously I've just bough a Stigmata to replace it - custom spec - if you buy the frame, already have some nice wheels and some finishing kit in the parts stores, you can get it spec'ed with Sram Force for about £5k - which is the same as the Rival of the peg.
The Stig is what I'd 'upgrade' to if I were going to, but in honesty, the Camino rides so well, that I don't really see the point. More generally, every time the gravel bike thing comes up, it seems to me that what's fundamental is where the geometry sits.
At one end of the scale, things like the Secan have quite road-ish head angles, at the other Caminos and Stigs are much closer to a mountain bike. That doesn't mean you can't ride a road-angled gravel bike on rougher stuff and I guess for some people the hanging on for grim death experience is part of the fun, but I like having a bike that I can ride on local easier Peak trails mixed with rough back lanes without thinking I'm about to die every time I hit a fast, rough descent.
Personally I'd start with the geometry and choose the brand/model second, but then I'm not really very bothered by bling brands and spending lots of money.
Surprised no one's mentioned the Tripster, unless I've missed it (titanium with that budget). I really don't know how you're going to choose with all the options available.
