Gravel biking: How it started, how it’s going…

I was riding a Raleigh 531 Avanti mountain bike with 26” wheels, drop bars and bar end shifters in 1993. There is nothing new. I’m still struggling with why gravel riding isn’t just turning off the road on the touring bike? I rode proper gravel in Mallorca on my Giant Propel with a new set of GP5000’s. One of my group was on 23c tubs. It’s just riding a bike, and riding is good. Sometimes gravel provides a shortcut and now I have a cross bike that can do that more easily. But a Dawes Galaxy will cope fine.

I enjoyed it, cheers RD. I’ve said before on this forum that it was your UKGravelCo ramblings that got me back into cycling. 🥃🥃🥃🥃

Things like this are what makes it all worth it 👌

I’m still struggling with why gravel riding isn’t just turning off the road on the touring bike?

I’ve been doing the latter since I bought my Kona Sutra (2006?) and then replaced it with my Amazon (2009?). However, my 2023 Topstone is a very different beast. I’m no geometry expert but it’s not a tourer and doesn’t handle like one.

I was riding a Raleigh 531 Avanti mountain bike with 26” wheels, drop bars and bar end shifters in 1993. There is nothing new. I’m still struggling with why gravel riding isn’t just turning off the road on the touring bike?

Well no one said it wasn’t possible to just turn off the road on your tourer or road bike. But not surprisingly you can make a bike that’s better for this than a tourer or road bike. Infact you mention that a cross bike is better than your tourer.

So agreement breaking out all round

All that’s really changed in cycling is the environment which surrounds it.  The roads are more crowded,  it’s more common among the population (outside of kids) and it’s more commercial, it’s more accessible and less technical.  Maps?  Nah! Fitness?  Not required so much.

WE may be riding different things, but to those just starting, it’s the same thing as it was 20, 30, 40 years ago, but perhaps with less uncertainty.

I still think that gravel-bikes as we know them (drop bar, skinny tyres, etc) came from the industry wanting to sell more CX bikes to none racers.  They looked at the fact people were riding MTBs on gravel and dirt tracks but also already owned XC, trail and DH bikes and someone thought “ooh, I’ve got an idea to flog these guys another bike”.
And as is always the case, these bikes evolved into what we have now.

While we’re doing Gravel…

I’ve seen a huge increase in the number of women on gravel bikes – solo, part of mixed-sex groups and also women-only groups. Maybe it’s a local thing, but it seems to have struck a bit of a chord. 

And plaid shirts… I don’t get it. My ideal shirt/jersey is short enough that it is fully covered when wearing a waterproof jacket. Most plaid shirts I see are much longer. Maybe, again, it’s a local thing? Or am I wrong in expecting to ride when it’s wet/raining and stay relatively dry and clean?

I do see riders who I know and respect wearing them – hence my confusion.

We need to get the message out that you should just get out and ride your bike, there are no rules, ride what you like, wear what you like

Who are these people who don’t get out there as they are too busy staying at home worrying about what to wear?

Our club rode gravel on Saturday as it was too icy for the normal club road rides. We had a complete mix of bikes from 1990s MTBs, to brand new Gravel bikes. Not a flannel shirt in sight. Lots of people had fun and no one cared what anyone rode / thought.

I think RD has been drinking too much industry propaganda.

@singlespeedstu – no offence taken, I was more worried about offending others.

I was out with my wife and our 17 & 12 year olds on an icy, muddy, wet, slushy, snowy gravel ride yesterday.

Great fun – and the correct clothing to wear was all off it.

And I’m lusting after a new Gryphon with a modern groupset now.

Who are these people who don’t get out there as they are too busy staying at home worrying about what to wear?

You have met some of the folk I know then? Genuinely I have a friend who always asks ‘what pace will the ride be?’ – even when we were proposing a few days of touring with panniers and pubs… His only experience of club rides is the fast 100km ride and much else is really hard from him to fathom. I do think that there are some people who, perhaps unintentionally, come to any group ride expecting a serious approach and significant work out as that is what group/club riding has been for them for their whole cycling career….

I do think that there are some people who, perhaps unintentionally, come to any group ride expecting a serious approach and significant work out as that is what group/club riding has been for them for their whole cycling career….

So key to all this I think. I’d say road clubs have dominated social cycle culture until fairly recently, at least in terms of clubs you can join, organised rides etc Vs the fairly self-sufficient word of MTB. Road clubs boomed in popularity in 2012-2015 but I expect a lot of people didn’t like what they saw (depends on the club, I’m generalising here – fair to say road clubs are mainly blokes chasing performance stats anyway).
So while there was a boom in cycling participation post 2012, the road clubs and British Cycling etc failed to offer them much because it takes more time to go from newb to brisk club rider that either side probably had time or inclination for. At the same time MTB has been going more and more extreme in its imagery in that time, trail centres are cool but it’s all destination stuff and people like accessibility. Gravel benefitted from all that and as Scotroutes says, look at the number of women enjoying gravel bikes (or maybe more correctly, gravel culture – they might be on any bike that works) compared to road or MTB. That bounce from road clubs to gravel is also (imo) why you see so many people happily* bimbling around off-road on bikes that are far more like road bikes than light XC MTBs.
*mostly. I see a few fear-faces or wobbles and I do wonder if they’d be happier on something less sketchy off-road, but as long as they’re mostly happy and safe.. all good.

The big turn off for me is a the folks with a million frame bags all over the bike for a bimble in the woods.

Yeah, but there is some logic in it. If I’m on a road bike and there’s an issue, I’m likely not far from civilization/assistance so I rarely carry much. If I’m on a MTB I’m likely to be more remote so I carry more – probably in a backpack. If I’m riding a gravel bike I might end up just as remote as on my MTB but I don’t like a heavy(ish) backpack when riding dropped bars. A bag or two strapped to the bike works pretty well. 

I generally tend to see older guys and girls on Gravel, I think it probably reflects the sort of “big circle in the woods/moors” riding we used to do back in the ’90’s and 00’s, and these guys have gone from those bikes to bigger bikes and trips abroad, done all that and have come all the way back around to just riding on a bike that’ll do a bit of everything and they don’t have to worry about it. Just pack some coffee and sarnie and a  “I think I’ll go that way” attitude, and you’re good to go. 

looks pretty cool. 

I still think that gravel-bikes as we know them (drop bar, skinny tyres, etc) came from the industry wanting to sell more CX bikes to none racers.

I think the big brands were quite late to her party. With smaller brands meeting a need and then the bigger brands realising they were missing out.

It can look like that from the outside but I think you give ‘the industry’ too much credit for ability to start these things off. Same as any trend, it’s always a core of riders doing what they like, a small brand or 3 make a bike out of the influences and see some demand, the bikes get interest and at some point later the bandwagon gets momentum and that’s generally where ‘the industry’ get on board and it comes to mainstream attention.

There you go. From the perspective of the designer Croix De Fer and Arkose

And secondly, looking at the other pictures is a beard compulsory for gravel?

Yes, an article about how it doesn’t matter what you look like, which only has photos of people who couldn’t be more stereotypically ‘gravel’ if you tried…

Oh the ironing…

Gravel has me conflicted, basically because the stereotype is essentially everything I am!

I used to teach in a school that did not have uniform. Kids all saw this as a bonus. Because they were all about the same age and from a very narrow socio economic class band and with a healthy dollop of peer pressure thrown in this merry band of ‘no rules, no uniform’ warriors promptly went out and bought themselves their own identikit uniform to rebel in and be unique. Only this uniform was twice as expensive as a normal uniform and a bit less practical. Is see an element of this in gravel biking and the gravel bike ‘look’ so beautifully portrayed in the photos here.

In the very first picture are you wearing Ronald McDonalds shoes? And secondly, looking at the other pictures is a beard compulsory for gravel?

1.Planet x toe covers
2. I think we’ve discussed that at least twice in this thread 😉

Just pack some coffee and sarnie and a “I think I’ll go that way” attitude, and you’re good to go.

This x 1000!

Yes, an article about how it doesn’t matter what you look like, which only has photos of people who couldn’t be more stereotypically ‘gravel’ if you tried…

I think that the whole point of wear what you like, be yourself etc is that you can wear what you want etc etc, even if people mistake how you want to be as being a cliché

And flannels don’t need ironing 😉

Yep. Really needs a woman

There are at least 2 people in the pictures who will be a little distressed you’ve mistaken them for men

There are at least 2 people in the pictures who will be a little distressed you’ve mistaken them for men

Whoosh!

Gravel biking was invented in Norway.

Or rather, in Norway they’ve had a thing called Grusvei sykling (literally gravel road cycling) for as long as there have been bikes.  It wasn’t really intentional, it’s just that as soon as you get a couple of kilometers away from the big towns and onto anything other than a main road you are likely to find yourself on roads that don’t have tarmac.

It’s been done on pretty much every kind of bike that has tyres bigger than 32mm (although you can also find yourself on grusvei with your regular road bike).

The only thing that differentiated it from ‘modern’ gravel biking was that people took it far too seriously for it to really be considered Gravel biking.  People would wear lycra, train for Grusvei races, and most men didn’t even have beards.

Now it’s become a lot more commercial here in Norway.  You see a lot more people with full beards, flannel shirts, and expensive packs full of organic sandwiches and coffee.

You still see the traditional grusvei riders out on the roads occasionally on their XC mountain bikes with HR monitors trying to pick up another Strava KOM but they are a dying breed compared to the ‘proper’ gravel riders.