Best 4 season road bike

If I was spending £4K I’d probably build a really nice CAAD13. You could probably build it with Ultegra di2 and some shallow carbon wheels for that.

My winter bike is like a poverty version of the above – Kinesis 4S with mechanical Ultegra, and some Hunt Carbon 35’s. Comes in about 8.5kg without mudguards.

That Cervelo Caledonia actually looks pretty good… Decent reach, short headtube, almost parallel angles…

On the racy end of the spectrum (stack and reach a tad lower), but di2 ultegra sub £4k…

https://www.merlincycles.com/de-rosa-idol-ultegra-di2-carbon-road-bike-2022-236354.html

on my Defy I went with SKS Raceblade Pro XLs which went on really easily

That’s what I use on my Defy and if it’s your only bike I think they are better than proper fitted mudguards simply because they go on for any ride that warrants them at anytime of year rather than fitted and removed according to the calendar. Different though if you have a dedicated bike for wet weather / winter.

My first Defy frame was one of those that had the the seat stays cut through by the Giant mudguards. If it hadn’t been for one of the O rings that held them on breaking I might not have noticed the damage till it snapped! Giant didn’t mess about, I took it back to the Giant store on a Sunday and in less than 24 hours they had a new frame on it’d way.

I’ve just bought an Enigma Etape with a mix of Ultegra and 105, with nice Zipp 303s wheels for the summer and will get some winter wheels. Its beautiful and practical – I’d encourage you to think about one OP.

With hindsight, I’d probably have probably gone for the slighy less sexy Enigma and saved a grand over the Laverack.

But it is lovely…

The Titus Roadrunner from PX looks really good and has a lifetime frame warranty, the tyre clearance you want and the ability to run proper mudguards.

It was on special recently at around £1700 with SRAM Force 1x. If the stack was higher I’d have bought one and rebuilt it 2x, selling most (nearly all actually) of the new bits attached to the titanium frame. Some swapping around of bits and a little eBay action would have yielded a really good value Ti all-season rough roadie.

Road disc is silly for a fair weather only bike IMHO, but yeah for winter/all seasons use it’s worth the extra weight, complexity, spoke offset issues…

I currently ride an Equilibrium Disc on old MTB 29er QR disc wheels with 28mm tyres and proper mudguards and it’s pretty great actually. It’s heavy but rides sweetly. It fits me better than a Roadrunner would, otherwise I’d definitely have gone for one.

My summer bike is a Domane SLR rim brake and it’s superb. Older Roubaix’s are excellent too, SL3/SL4 era, they ride better than the newer ones IME and bikes don’t actually get significantly better than that. But if you do a lot of dirty wet weather riding it’s worth getting discs, and Ti will brush off shitty conditions better than any other material.

Struggling to find anything I thinks a big improvement on what I have.

Anyone got any experience of the Ribble endurance bikes – carbon or Ti.

How easy to fit mudguards to the carbon endurance ?

Just buy the bike you want and look after it wel (wash after each ride). Tyres are all that matters. Quality sealed hubs and hydraulic discs. No rim brake shite for the UK.

Not sure how you get a 4 seasons road bike. Perhaps buying into marketing too much here.

After looking some more I’m leaning towards a Fairlight Strael 3 or the enigma etap. Looking at availability it could be while before they are available.
Big call to order now and wait months for one though. Thanks all for opinions.