Since I took up road riding 2 years ago I’ve hardly touched my lovely titanium Global, which is gathering dust. Mostly the reason is because, nice though it is, it’s so heavy, cumbersome and slow compared with the roadie.

I’m also thinking I’d like a winter road bike. Last weekend on a ride in the Dales I met some crossers training for the Three Peaks Cyclocross; their bikes looked pretty handy and almost as fast as a roadie on their knobbly tyres. I had a look at a Genesis Croix de fer in Harry Hall’s, Reynolds steel frame, disc brakes and reduced for a quick sale to £999. You could do a mixed road and offroad ride on this, carry it up mountains and it would be excellent in winter conditions. I have no interest in trail centres.

I was tempted, so tempted, but somehow haven’t got around to putting my money down yet. I wonder whether I would get more on Ebay selling the Global as a complete XC bike or selling the frame and forks separately?

Any thoughts?

Id recommend going SS on the Ti first.

I have 2 cracking light, nippy, bikes that make me want to ride.

Turn the Global into as much as a crosser as you can, there is no reason you can’t get it well under 20lbs for a lot less than a grand.
Carbon rigid forks, 700c wheels, skinny cross tyres, you’ll end up with something like this

That worked for a while, but the BB was a little high for the road stuff, so I bought an original Scandal from the classifieds & I run a pretty similar spec now, just with better components.

Cheers.