I made the mistake of visiting the Cotic site last week and saw the Escapade and got thinking… I currently have a fixie for all commuting/ city hacking duties, and a hardtail for MTB, but I do need* something a bit more versatile, for hacking around the city, commuting, but also longer road rides at some point, and possibly even a bit of off-road CX type riding.

Sooo… any good or bad stories about it? Are there other frames out there that’d offer the same kind of versatility? I’m 6’ish, ride a medium Soul and a 60cm fixed gear – which size would best fit? And how would I find the geometry?

* “need”

I got one 2 weeks ago. Had a couple of outings to arse about in the woods, but nothing serious yet. Feels very nice, like I’m sat in it, rather than on it. Surprisingly stable and great fun for hacking about on, it still feels fairly sharp on the road, accelerates quite nicely/comparative to my Triban 3.

I’m 6″1 and ride a medium BFe (though feels small) and I got a large Escapade.

Collected mine from Cotic this week, and had first proper ride today – mixture of dirt roads, gravel tracks and Tarmac, and it felt absolutely great (lol fun in a few places); stable and compliant enough not to feel twitchy off road, but still nippy on roads. I’m 6′ and had a test ride of a medium and following that, and Paul and Cy’s advice, I bought a large – glad I did as it’s definitely a better fit straight out of the factory than the medium (with more options to tweak fit if required).

HTH

I’ve got the original drop bar roadrat, so sort of an escapade.

I’ve just got back from a week in france touring road and tracks on it on big tyres with camping kit. That’s now come off to ride to work tomorrow and at some point the gears will come off too and it’ll go back to skinnies and singlespeed, which is how it spends most of the year.

So yes, it’s versatile. It is very much a jack of all trades though, not as good at touring as a tourer, not as good on road as a roadie etc etc.

I really like it- about the only things i would change about it have been sorted on the newer versions.

For what you’re looking at I’d suggest that whatever you go for you put some rims that will take the high volume tubeless tyres that are coming out at present- i borrowed an mtb wheel with a wtb rim to run a nano tubeless on the front, it was great and would let me swap to something like the new wtb exposure tyre really easily. Thinking about re-doing my wheels to that

Sounds right up my street! Looks like I’d need the original Escapade in a large, for the dogsbody dropouts and the sizing; shame they have none of the gunmetal left in that size… 🙁