It's a Long and Dusty Road...

It's a Long and a Dusty Road....

 

So ….Corona rules willing I'll soon be heading for Romania. Taking my gravel bike, guitar and Yvonne with me. Well I have to take Yvonne along, she has the car...and the driving license!

 

Some of you may be asking what is a gravel bike?

 

I'll try to explain. There are, when it comes to cycling as a sport rather than as a means of transport, various categories of bicycle. A  racing bike, is lightweight, aerodynamic, has fragile looking wheels and curved or 'dropped' handlebars They are designed for cycling on roads These are the bikes you will see on TV during the coverage of the Tour de France.  A close relative is the cyclo-cross bike, adapted but not really designed for riding over muddy and sandy circuits in a sport created before the invention of the mountain bike. You will  be familiar with mountain bikes, they have robust frames, straight handlebars, wide wheels, chunky tires and they are designed to ride cross-country. Then there are 'randonneur', globetrotter, or trekking bikes. Sturdy bikes, purpose built for long distance bicycle touring. Earlier versions like the ones a sponsor provided for us many years ago for a trip around North America had racing handlebars. Later models had straight bars or curiously shaped ones, some vaguely resembling deer antlers or spaghetti loops..  

Anyway –  if you take the main characteristics of all the above mentioned bikes, put them in a cauldron, stir a little and say the magic word, the result will be a gravel bike!  And, to be honest,  that's what the original gravel bikes looked like: a mixture of clever engineering, fantasy and advanced plumbing!

Gravel racing started in Australia or America, where there are a lot of long dirt roads, and soon spread to the rest of the world. Before long the manufacturers realised there was money to be made. Now they all have one or more gravel bikes in their collections. Some are not so very different from racing or cyclocross models except they allow for wider wheels and tyres. While at the other end of the spectrum the bikes are more closely related to the globetrotting concept, sometimes advertised as 'adventure bikes'.

Humans seem to have a compulsion to divide people into two opposing groups. Gravel riding is no exception here it's 

Lycra versus Baggy!

The Lycra group are likely to ride bikes that most closely resemble racing bikes, wear tight fitting bike gear and chose routes that are mainly over asphalt with unpaved or partially paved sections. The Baggy riders wear, as the name suggests, wide loose-fitting clothing.  Baggy fundamentalist will wear lumberjack shirts, have  tin cups hanging from their saddle and a bottle opener welded to the bike frame! Baggies are generally more adventurous and they prefer craft beer to sports drinks.

But of course, most people will be somewhere between the two extremes and that's where I am.... slap- bang in the middle!

With a cupboard full of Lycra I'm not about to throw it all out now. When it came to buying a new bike however I was tempted by bikes at both ends of the gravel spectrum. Eventually, with the help of a local alternative bike shop, I built up a bike. However my choice was for something 'a bit different' rather than for fashion or speed! I don't think the 'Lycra Lads' are very impressed with the end result but , it turns out, the bike frame has a bit of a cult status with, and is much admired by,  the 'Baggy Boys'!

 

Despite the fact that gravel has become so much of a hype in bikeland and that I’d rather never use the word gravel again  my favourite cycling environment is a dusty place somewhere between the road and country. And I've been doing it for years! At home and abroad, in countries where most of the roads are unsurfaced!  It’s true that I don’t have the skills or courage for the more extreme kinds of mountain biking but even on the racing bike I have always preferred more remote, demanding and often less well maintained roads. At my age it’s strange to find myself caught up in the latest trend but on the other hand, in a way, the trend has just caught up with me!!!