I’m looking for a drop bar bike that will take a pannier rack for lightish touring, mudguards and decent width tyres for road and railway line type surfaces. Ideally with hydraulic disc brakes and good low ratio gearing for loaded climbs. Not really ventured into this market before, so would’ve interested to hear options and recommendations. I’m 6’3” if that makes any difference (eg would a COTIC escapade fit?)

Cheers!

Spesh Diverge.

For light touring pretty much any gravel bike with the requisite rack mounts would be fine, I reckon.

The only issue may be getting the gearing low enough, but switching out a standard double for an alpine double may sort that.  Assuming you can find a gravel bike that isn’t 1x!

Anything in the Dawes range you fancy – proper old school tourers

Giant Revolt Advanced. It’s a gravel bike but has a full compliment of mudguard and rack mounts and comes with 2×10 gearing.

I have a Mason Definition 2 to fill that roll, it’s been faultless.

Van Nicholas Amazon

To be honest, the difficult bit is going to be actually picking one from the gazillions of options. I’d have thought that there’d be a number of choices in the Genesis Adventure range and there are a number of lovely bike in the classified at the moment too.

Most gravel bikes will do although as said a 2x would be best for gearing. Diverge has a sub compact 48,32 rather than usual 50, 34.

Surly Disc Trucker.

Mine came from Spa Cycles fully built with cable-discs but they do what you want.

Budget options for good kit and frames are On One Space Chicken and the Titanium Planet X Tempest.

Less bang for your buck, but the Trek Checkpoint range is well thought out and has plenty of price points and options.

Unless your touring somewhere flat/carrying no stuff /not really touring and just like to look like your a tourer

You’ll be wanting a 3* set up for multi week tours.

Range isn’t the measurement to compare for touring. The number of individual ratios and the jumps between them are quite important. Nothing worse than spending all day clicking up and down between two gears because you have a big gap right where the ideal gear for the headwind you have been riding against for 3 days is.

If your not touring with the touring bike then ignore.

Always liked the look of a Fairlight Faran

Faran

If you are going touring, get a tourer. And a triple at that. You can’t go wrong with a Dawes Ultra Galaxy. You can even ride it on gravel.

Nothing worse than spending all day clicking up and down between two gears because you have a big gap right where the ideal gear for the headwind you have been riding against for 3 days is.

But if your touring then speed doesn’t matter. Stick it in the easier gear and slow down by 0.5 mph.

depends if your crossing the area with nothing in it and need to make the only petrol station (for food)on route before it closes or not i guess….

but maybe that just reflects the places i go tour.

depends if your crossing the area with nothing in it and need to make the only petrol station (for food)on route before it closes or not i guess….

Swoon….

Amyway op was looking for a “light tourer” so I doubt he’s as hardcore as you.

Kona Sutra

Nowt hardcore about it. a tourer needs plenty of gears and plenty of low ones – for touring.

not so sure on the must be a triple and I’m pretty old school – on my tourer running 10 speed with a double XT chainset on front with 40 and 24t and 11-36 outback – plenty of gear choice as far as I’m concerned

not so sure on the must be a triple and I’m pretty old school

of all the things to be a snob about, not doing bike touring “properly” 😂😂

Single ring works for me. Low gears I need, not high ones.

My tourer currently has a triple. That’ll be changing to a double in the next few weeks. Larger cassettes and sub-compact cranks provide sufficient range at the speeds I require for touring.

light tourer – i missed that in the ops requirement.

in which case – any old hybrid or CX bike with slicks will do.

ITs the loaded up requirement that needs plenty of gears and a stiff frame – I used to have a roadrat as a light tourer – then i noticed i took more stuff on the longer trips – i refused to not have a porch on scottish tours etc etc …. and my road rat became so noodly when loaded.

3* with a close range cassette would be my choice too, rather 1* or 2* with a massive cassette. It gives the lowest of low gears, and the nice close gaps between that are desirable when riding on the road.

FWIW, I’ve got a 46/36/24 own-brand triple from Spa Cycles with a 11/28 cassette.

Plus, square taper triples cost peanuts and the bottom brackets last for decades.