i am lucky to currently have 2 ti bikes (a ht mtb and a road bike) but am seriously thinking of trading them in towards a gravel bike of some sort.

as much as i love the bikes i mostly ride the same places eg salisbury plain, marlbrough downs when i do ride offroad and have barely ridden my road bike due to various reasons (fear of traffic being the biggest).

am thinking of downsizing to one bike (a gravel bike of some sort) as i don’t really do a lot of offroad riding and feel that a gravel bike would suit me a lot better nowadays (especially on the k & a canal to bath/bristol that i ride sometimes).

it would be faster on the road and towpath than my ht but not batter us like my road bike when offroad.

as the title am worried about riding one on the marlbrough downs/ridgeway. would it be a bad idea or not too bad to ride the trails on one?

thanks in advance 🙂

When it’s wet on the Ridgeway I wouldn’t enjoy riding any bike on there, so a gravel bike in the dry is just fine.

I reckon it’d be about perfect

If your riding is not really ‘mtb’ enough, and not really ‘road’ enough, then a gravel bike may be the perfect machine for you.
Perhaps choose one which takes fairly big tyres, so you could put chunkier rubber on if you do intend to go somewhere a bit rougher.

Yes, perfect bike. I ride my Kona Sutra ULTD up there regularly. Granted its on the MTB side of gravel but its great fun, not too bad on the road getting to the ridgeway still.

Gravel bike would be good, but go for s big tyre clearance as you can. I have a 650b gravel bike and found pedal strikes an issue on the many rutted sections (bike may also have had a relatively low BB), so have now got a rigid 29er running 2.6 tyres which seems a bit better. Not quite as quick on the road sections though…

Si Richardson from GCN just did the the King Alfred Way on the new Lauf gravel bike, in one day (fastest known time), so probably proves a gravel bike is more than up to the task. Said he was grateful for the lauf forks though…

Even if its not for you offroad, they make good back lane winter bikes with bigger tyres and mudguard mounts so it sounds a good option.

Yeah, brilliant, but you want decent sized tyres. I rode my commuter up there with 32c tyres and even on the smoothest graded bits of track I was concerned about whacking a rim on a stone. Because the trails are so open you’d be doing some decent speeds, and in summer the ground is pretty hard so any stones that get kicked up onto the trail just sit there waiting to spang you.

Watch this

Why not keep the mtb and just swap the road bike for a gravel bike? Then you’ve got 2 options depending on what you’re riding. Something like a Planet X Space Chicken or Freeranger come up fairly cheap in sales from time to time

Never mind skinny boy experienced MTBer and ex road pro Richardson up there on his fancy Lauf, Mrs llama did the ridgeway on a bog standard rigid gravel bike, with next to no off road experience, and it was fine.

I did KAW on my gravel bike. The ridgeway was one of my favourite sections. Perfect bike, when it’s dry

I used to ride a rigid 26er on the ridgeway around uffington. It was ace.