I reckon GPbike – General Purpose bike – is the best way of describing the category.

MTB capability but fitted with high volume tyres with easy rolling for the road, and a comfortable all day riding position. It’s not a hybrid, their tyres are too skinny, it’s what a hybrid should be.

Basically a 29er frame set up for the road. Preferably one of the unfashionable steep head angle frames. A Scandal is excellent for example apart from the low head.

If you haven’t tried it, give it a go, you’ll probably like it.

And you’ll not be condemned to taking a car to ride loops anymore. You can ride out from home, follow a track over to the other side of a mountain and ride back on a diffferent road. 🙂

Two quotes from the Rough Stuff Fellowship: The Early Years

“It appears that a man named Amos Sugden claimed that he had crossed the Sty Head Pass in Lakeland equipped with a bicycle of some 50lbs weight and shod with solid tyres. The date was August 1890 and, although this was quite early in the cycling scene, he made no claim to be the first. Was he merely following another cyclist’s footsteps? His achievement was no mean feat, and caused quite a stir in the current wheelers’ world. Just to rub it in he subsequently went on to cross most of the Lake District foot passes.”

“By 2.30 pm I was traversing the tops of the Long Mynd, this being after a visit to Condover to see the Elizabethan Hall and Leebotwood, to see the old drovers’ inn of 1600 AD. Hereabouts two cyclists – then unknown to each other – passed in opposite directions, but each going to the same place [the RSF inaugural meeting, 1955]. Arthur Matthews and Harry Parkinson are now popular members of the Lancashire Section. Harry, by the way, unable to obtain a bed that night, slept on a pile of gravel at the roadside.” Bob Harrison.
http://www.cyclorama.net/viewArticle.php?id=275

Just shut the hell up and sodding ride.

Hmm.

In recent decades bikes have become more specialised. So a typical MTB seems to have 800mm bars and 5″ of travel and an upright position. If you want to do 15 miles of road to get to a trail then it’s possible but honestly not very comfortable.

Back in the early 90s when an MTB was fully rigid, had 580mm bars and 1.7″ tyres it was fine, but on a modern bike it’s not much fun. Who cares if it’s marketing led or not? Specialist bikes exist, and they are better at certain kinds of riding – of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be?

epicyclo – Member

miketually – Member
But gravel bikes are for riding gravel roads, and we don’t really have those over here…

What we have is close enough.[/quote]

You’re “up there” though, aren’t you? Not “down here”? 😉

It appears that a man named Amos Sugden claimed that he had crossed the Sty Head Pass in Lakeland equipped with a bicycle of some 50lbs weight and shod with solid tyres

I’ve not done the wasdale side but can’t imagine riding seathwaite side can have been fun on that bike. Hardcore tho.

The “but it’s a tourer innit” comment kinda irks me as my (and most other) gnarmac/bridleslayer is about 20lb lighter than the average tourer. Also wondering what the uptake of disc brakes in the tourer market was like pre gnarmac.
But that’s besides the point as I reckon the “it’s a tourer” crowd are just as bad as the “no it’s not”, both trying to pigeon hole others riding and pour scorn with no basis whatsoever.
It’s all riding bikes innit?

gnarmac – and now bridleslayer – works for me as they are pisstakes and not riding specific.

Harry, by the way, unable to obtain a bed that night, slept on a pile of gravel at the roadside

So an early gravel biker then? The old RSF geezers I’ve met were all seriously hard men, including the two I once encountered taking a tandem over the Lairig Ghru.

In recent decades bikes have become more specialised. So a typical MTB seems to have 800mm bars and 5″ of travel and an upright position. If you want to do 15 miles of road to get to a trail then it’s possible but honestly not very comfortable.

Back in the early 90s when an MTB was fully rigid, had 580mm bars and 1.7″ tyres it was fine, but on a modern bike it’s not much fun. Who cares if it’s marketing led or not? Specialist bikes exist, and they are better at certain kinds of riding – of course they are. Why wouldn’t they be?

Yep, and I’m pleased about that.

When I bought my first mtb, just over 20 years ago, you had precisely no choice, you had to have a mtb. Road bikes weren’t very popular, hybrids weren’t common (as in sit up, narrow tyres, flat bars,) and the only place you’d find a cross bike was mail order.

Why are people complaining about being given plenty of choice?

Yep, and I’m pleased about that.

Me too. My original Orange P7 in 1996 was servicable. My current bikes are all bloody fantastic.

miketually – Member
‘What we have is close enough.’
You’re “up there” though, aren’t you? Not “down here”?

Yes, lucky me. 🙂

But I did live in Hampshire in the 60s for a year when I was a lad – followed a tasty English lass south – and I found plenty tracks to ride on my roadbike and never a cross word from anyone I met. I just did what I was used to in Scotland, poked my wheel along anything that looked interesting. (I didn’t know about the lack of freedom you poor folk have down there, so I assumed it was ok.)

BTW I don’t know why they call them the “Downs” they’re more like “Bloody Ups”.

Isn’t this just people finally realising that for the vast majority of the riding they do a full on MTB is too much in one direction, and a full on road race bike is too far the other way?

It’s like the whole sportive headtube thing, average people realising that a full on race geometry and close clearances isn’t appropriate for normal riding.

And now MTBs are too far past the general all-round ATB bike shape they were 20-30 years ago they’re not really appropriate for normal riding either.

They’re just ‘bikes’ for flexible riding, a bit of road, a bit of offroad, with mid-sized tyres, middle of the road geometry, and middling weight and occasional load carrying ability without being full on tourer.

Very much a meld of rough-stuff/CX/MTB/Tourer/Audax, they don’t fall into any pigeon hole, sure some are more biased towards one area than the other but they are the very definition of a hybrid, just that the don’t fit what we’ve been calling hybrids for the last 20 years and the marketeers need a new way to capture the imagination hence all this gravel/allroad/gnarmac stuff.

Plenty of us have been using either older converted MTBs, or tweaked hybrids and tourers for general duty like this for years, but now there’s a lot more choice in decent bikes off the peg for it, gotta be a good thing.

Anyway I like the term Gnarmac, it’s just a bit of fun and being used in jest more than anything.

Harry, by the way, unable to obtain a bed that night, slept on a pile of gravel at the roadside.

😆 😆 😆

The “but it’s a tourer innit” comment kinda irks me as my (and most other) gnarmac/bridleslayer is about 20lb lighter than the average tourer.

So its a “lightweight tourer innit”?

Anyone interested in this type of bike should consider joining the RSF (Rough Stuff Fellowship).

Especially if you live in England. These club is a repository of loads of unknown and little used routes and sneaky places to camp.

@epicyclo that RSF link is handy, cheers…

Otherwise this thread has mostly been a blah, blah fest of niche-whore accusations, and nomenclature whingeing from arses who wish everything had just stopped in 1987 when they could just about still understand the world…

Whatever you want to call it, it’s here to stay…
Who’s up for getting a batch of “Bridleslayer” T-shirt and stickers run off?