Gravel bikes off tarmac?

General cycling advice ( NOT technical ! )
pwa
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by pwa »

It probably depends where you live, but around here there is a lot of forestry track riding in the hills, plus some ropey lanes that become more attractive if you have wider tyres. I do see folk on gravel bikes quite a lot. I watch out for them when I walk the whippet off lead, to avoid conflict. We have many miles of this sort of thing: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.63200 ... 240!8i5120 and https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.69739 ... 760!8i2880
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TrevA
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by TrevA »

Gravel riding is what we used to call “Roughstuff”. I remember doing it as far back as the 70’s locally - Sewstern Lane/The Drift, High Dyke. Add in all the local bridleways and canal towpath and you can easily string together a mostly off road route. I don’t have a gravel bike but I do ride off road on my touring bike - a Dawes Super Galaxy with 37mm tyres. My son in law rides a his gravel bikes on the road, in fact his winter bike is a gravel bike with 35mm road tyres, great for absorbing the many potholes on local roads.
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scottg
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by scottg »

Sweep wrote: 18 Mar 2023, 6:41pm[snip]
Or do they just give some racers/road bikers the permission they secretly crave to buy/ride a more relaxed frame, on wider tyres than their earlier devotion to 23/25mm tyres, more accommodating lower gears range? On tarmac?
Here in the colonies, crap roads that haven't been repaved since Queen Thatcher, make a 'gravel' bike
a good road bike (36mm road tyres are common), also the large tire clearance leaves plenty of space for mudguards.
The days of race frames that could barely clear a 23mm seem to have passed.
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cycle tramp
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by cycle tramp »

rareposter wrote: 19 Mar 2023, 7:37am
Nearholmer wrote: 18 Mar 2023, 9:55pm it’s a trendy type of cycling, with a big following among younger people, which it certainly wasn’t say ten years ago.
Before that you had road bikes - great for riding on smooth road, capable of things like cobbles on occasion; and you had MTB - great for proper off-road but dull, slow and cumbersome on the simple stuff (like fireroads, country lanes etc).

Along comes a bike with the drop bars, looks and rack mounts of a road/touring bike but the clearances, wider range gears, tubeless tyres and disc brakes from a mountain bike and you've got something that's capable of a huge range of riding in the middle ground where a road bike would get shaken to bits but a mountain bike would be slow and boring.

And that's really only happened in the last 10years or so.
I really don't think either Thorn (who produced their first nomad in the mid 1990's) Dawes (who produced the Down-One) or Orbit (who built the Carraway) remember it that way - indeed before the gravel bike there was the dropped bar, 26 inch wheeled tourer/mixed use/go anywhere bike...

..Which were fitted with rack mounts, 26 inch wheels - with a range of different tyre types and widths,

..which seemed to be fitted with a triple chainset of all things.. gosh how did people did with the complexity! (But it gave an amazing range of gears, with a limited number of sprockets).

For those who doubt you could get anywhere on a 26 inch wheel (*gosh they were so small!) Robin Thorn has collected photos from happy customers who have cycled their 26 inch wheeled bikes, all over the world...
Last edited by cycle tramp on 19 Mar 2023, 10:59pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Bmblbzzz
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by Bmblbzzz »

They were obviously the trend-setters, clearing the way for the big globals. Or alternatively they were too far ahead of the curve, and it never went big back then because the technology to make it work in volume hadn't been developed.
cycle tramp
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by cycle tramp »

Bmblbzzz wrote: 19 Mar 2023, 10:50pm They were obviously the trend-setters, clearing the way for the big globals. Or alternatively they were too far ahead of the curve, and it never went big back then because the technology to make it work in volume hadn't been developed.
Thorn are still building high quality bicycles, and their frames can now be fitted with a mixture of wheel sizes (anything from 26 to 700 and in-between)

Orbit sadly did go under, but for other reasons

Dawes produced its Down-One over a number of years in different re-carnations, and the Down-One still has a fan base.

The idea of a genuine all terrain bicycle is nothing new
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by Bmblbzzz »

At the dawn of the bicycle, roads outside towns and cities had been largely neglected; rail was the future, or certainly the present. So it might be said that all early bikes were gravel bikes by necessity.

As for the manufacturing trio above, it's perhaps unexpected that Thorn should be the one to survive. I think Dawes also survive, but only as a label really (by the way wasn't it One-Down rather than Down-One? or did they make a Down-One as well?). Just as well to remember that Giant, Trek and other current behemoths started off in someone's garage and will also end up there, at some point.
Nearholmer
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by Nearholmer »

Gravel riding is what we used to call “Roughstuff”
In the UK, and very definitely in England, it certainly seems to cover pretty much the same ground, which is to say very varied ground, but most of the big-brand bikes being sold under the “gravel” banner are optimised for gravel road racing under the conditions that exist in the US and other countries where the lower rungs of the public road network are still as most roads were here in the 1890s.

Some of the more aggressive/racy (and as it happens more insanely expensive) gravel racing bikes look to me to be geometrically almost totally unsuitable for “English rough stuff”, although they are so light that carrying them over the difficult bits wouldn’t be a problem! Of course, there are other “gravel bikes”, in a wide range of materials, and a wide range of geometries, and one edge of the continuum blurs off into modern MTBs, so it’s pretty much pointless to attempt to pin-down the bike type outside of gravel road racing ……. The riding surfaces can, I think be characterised though: not feasible to ride on a modern road bike, but not absolutely necessitating an MTB.
Last edited by Nearholmer on 20 Mar 2023, 8:35am, edited 1 time in total.
peetee
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by peetee »

Bmblbzzz wrote: 19 Mar 2023, 11:41pm Just as well to remember that Giant, Trek and other current behemoths started off in someone's garage and will also end up there, at some point.
Good point. Main-stream bikes are designed by people not omnipotent beings and as well as having their own ideas these people are influenced by production, cost, and supply restrictions before those ideas become a product. Beyond those companies there are equally competent people; some that tinker in sheds and some that go on to form smaller companies themselves. All of them have a unique take on what makes the ideal bike for what they have to or want to ride and their designs reflect that.
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rjb
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by rjb »

It's gone full circle again which brings us back to Cyclo-cross when riders were happy riding full on road bikes over such terrain with the only difference being cantilever brakes to aid mud clearance. :wink:
Which goes to show there's nothing new about gravel just the industry trying to convince punters to empty their wallets. :lol:
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by PH »

cycle tramp wrote: 19 Mar 2023, 10:54pm
Bmblbzzz wrote: 19 Mar 2023, 10:50pm They were obviously the trend-setters, clearing the way for the big globals. Or alternatively they were too far ahead of the curve, and it never went big back then because the technology to make it work in volume hadn't been developed.
Thorn are still building high quality bicycles, and their frames can now be fitted with a mixture of wheel sizes (anything from 26 to 700 and in-between)
Mixed surface riding has always existed, people have sought out routes off the beaten track and have found bikes capable of doing so.
The difference now is it's mainstream, I can go into Halfords and look at a variety of such bikes. All the producers, big and small, are including bikes of this sort and all the component manufacturers are catering for them, more than that, they're developing products suitable straight out the box.

I like mixed surface riding, away from the traffic and into the scenery without all the concentration and effort of proper MTBing. Rather than banging on about having always done so, on a succession of Hybrid and Touring bikes, I rejoice at the current availability of better stuff to do it on.
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by peetee »

PH wrote: 20 Mar 2023, 9:49am
Mixed surface riding has always existed, people have sought out routes off the beaten track and have found bikes capable of doing so.
The difference now is it's mainstream
It’s been mainstream before too. Late eighties mountain bikes had these attributes. The higher spec models had shed the slack ‘clunker heritage’ frame angles thanks to the design inputs and racing requirements of messers Ritchey and Murray in the states. In the UK custom builders such as Roberts, Bromwich and Overbury’s showed that we could build a fast, manoeuvrable bike for our trails too.
As I’ve already mentioned, these can still be better for the job than modern offerings.
The older I get the more I’m inclined to act my shoe size, not my age.
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by mattheus »

tim-b wrote: 19 Mar 2023, 6:58am It depends on whether I can face cleaning it. Again.
Local "gravel" is mainly muddy forest tracks and bridleways, although there are some more solid, gravelly NCN routes through the woods as well.
Indeed.
I heard an amusing phrase around this recently:
"British Gravel" - until you try them could be any flavour of surface, meaning often muddy tracks/bridleways

As ooposed to the marketing dream:
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PH
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by PH »

peetee wrote: 20 Mar 2023, 10:00am
PH wrote: 20 Mar 2023, 9:49am
Mixed surface riding has always existed, people have sought out routes off the beaten track and have found bikes capable of doing so.
The difference now is it's mainstream
It’s been mainstream before too. Late eighties mountain bikes had these attributes.
It's an argument, but I'm not sure it's right, weren't such bikes still very much considered off-roaders rather than mixed use? I got into cycling in the late 90's, maybe such bikes were available, but I didn't come across any, the choice at Halfords was road bikes, city commuters (Hybrids) and MTB's.
The first of the crossover bikes I noticed were based on cyclocross bikes, with the geometry relaxed and some practical additions, the Specialized Tricross being the most successful. But people don't like canti brakes, so it wasn't till discs gained popularity that it really boomed. A few years on and I was tempted by a couple of bikes, the Genesis Croix de Fer and Trek Portland, both of which I recall received considerable derision on this forum for being neither fish nor fowl, some things don't change.
mattheus
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Re: Gravel bikes off tarmac?

Post by mattheus »

TrevA wrote: 19 Mar 2023, 3:40pm Gravel riding is what we used to call “Roughstuff”. I remember doing it as far back as the 70’s locally - Sewstern Lane/The Drift, High Dyke. Add in all the local bridleways and canal towpath and you can easily string together a mostly off road route. I don’t have a gravel bike but I do ride off road on my touring bike - a Dawes Super Galaxy with 37mm tyres. My son in law rides a his gravel bikes on the road, in fact his winter bike is a gravel bike with 35mm road tyres, great for absorbing the many potholes on local roads.
Good stuff!

I believe the RSF even predates your 70s adventures. Luckily this forum has already covered it:

viewtopic.php?p=1674148#p1674148

Clearly one could do this riding well before tubeless, disc brakes and "1x" tranmissions.
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