Horse for the Course – Icelandic Gravel on the GT Grade

On a 200km route around the starkest landscapes of Iceland, Tom Marvin got a chance to try out the GT Grade in its natural habitat.

[Music] so I recently went to Iceland to have a quick ride on the GT grade I wanted to see what it was really like on a on a mix of Road surfaces it’s marketed as a gravel bike so I thought well let’s take it on some tarmac and then let’s take it on some gravel to see how it really sort of handles out there so what is a gravel bike well um you’re getting geometry which is slightly slacker to make it a little bit easier to ride um you’re perhaps getting sort of flared handlebars for a little bit extra Comfort carbon frames for example may have a little bit more sort of give built into them so they’re a little bit comfier on r terrain and that’s often backed up by wider tires for example 28 or 30 or 32 mil wide tires run on slightly wide rims to give a better Tire profile and allow you to get away with lower pressures which therefore becomes a little bit more comfortable so I had the GT grade carbon 105 as the name suggests it’s a GT grade with a Shimano 105 group set it also comes with shimano’s hydraulic Road disc brakes I didn’t really change the spec of the GT grade for my ride other than adding some luggage curtesy porcelain rocket I added the saddle bag had plenty of room for spare set of clothes tube waterproof jackets that sort of thing my ride took place every couple of days so I needed a little extra carrying capacity than I would normally have from a few pockets in my jersey so starting out from reic obviously the the time roads much like any sort of generic road bike the the grade worked reasonably well on that you know the the tires had low rolling resistance the bike was comfortable when the road started to get a little bit more uh cut up and a bit choppy it was a pretty capable road bike it climbs all right it descends quite nicely because of those slack angles so it’s quite confident and aspiring when we hit the gravel roads there’s no doubt that the rougher surfaces are sort of translated through the fork and through the frame into you and there’s no denying that it’s not a smooth ride with the wider tires I managed to drop them down to around 70 PSI which helps take the worst out and gives you a little extra grip but to be fair the the gravel roads have got a really fine grip over the top of them some of them and there’s no denying that grip at times was an issue you there’s one cl in particular which took me over a small little Co down to the lake in the highlands and with the 28c slick tires it’s fair to say that there was a fair bit of wheel spin going up when I was really you know it got really steep so there’s quite a lot of effort going into it coming down the other side though the slack angles and the sort of relative compliance of the frame and I was quite happy just sort of Letting Go on the brakes and going pretty much full ball down the hill I have to admit that when I hit the 90° Corner I’d have been a little bit happier perhaps if I had say a wider Tire or lower pressures or even a cyle cross Tire because there was a little bit of drifting and it wasn’t quite as controlled as perhaps I might lik it to have been that’s one of the great things about Iceland though is that every time you come around the corner there’s probably going to be a new view which is going to take your breath away again and and that was really one of the highlights of of of riding in over in Iceland on a traditional road bike or a sporti bike the the roughness of the surfaces and what’s probably going to be a narrower Tire on that bike you’re going to get beaten up pretty well um and also on the looser surfaces traction really is going to be quite an issue the cycle cross bike probably isn’t a a bad option though although the geometry is less suited to longer rides I have to say though the grade was uh a really good option for that trip out there perhaps if I had slightly wider or more nobbly tires it would have been even better but it’s a comfortable frame the geometry is good I like in particular the handlebars which are nicely flared so for extra comfort and the disc brakes meant that when conditions were pretty unpleasant it was great to have that extra little bit of uh Power there [Music] [Applause] [Music] a