A Mountain Biker’s Guide To Gravel Riding

It’s not a mountain bike, it’s not a road bike. So what actually is a gravel bike? What is ‘graveling’? Everyone seems to have their own definition of what ‘the spirit of Gravel’ is all about. From road riding on dust, to singletrack sending, to bike packing!

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⏱ Timestamps ⏱
00:00 – Intro
00:58 – what is a gravel bike?
04:20 – Where can you ride them?
06:14 – Little changes big differences
07:27 – Bike Packing
08:19 – Less is more
09:28 – Why I gravel

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are you a mountain biker that’s tempted by gravel or are you a roadie that’s tempted by the knobbly tires well here’s my Mountain Biker’s guide to gravel gravel bikes are a lot like ebikes I know that sounds a bit odd but hear me out well they get a lot of hate and I think that’s because people don’t really know what to do with them but deep down secretly I think a lot of people actually want one I know that’s controversial and I know that these bikes are quite controversial but let’s be clear it isn’t a mountain bike and it does have curly bars and relatively skinny tires but no it’s not a road bike either what it is is a lot of fun it’s very fun off-road okay in different ways because you’re not going to set new K or Q on nly single track on a gravel bike but you will have lots and lots of fun so let’s try and be open-minded in this new year and embrace things that are slightly different but definitely fun [Music] one of the first defining features of a gravel bike is the drop bars and they look odd especially if you’re coming from a mountain bike side they might look odd if you’re coming from a roadside too because these are quite flared and a little bit of a different shape and that different shape means that they’re really comfortable off-road and on Long rides because you’ve got multiple hand positions there are rigid fork and no Dro of post options or there’s options like this where we’ve got a suspension fork and a dropper post much like a mountain bike you can get your graph graph frame in lots of different materials from steel to thae to aluminium alloy to carbon and this propane is made from carbon and it’s a really interesting material for a gravel bike because you can make a really smooth gravel bike from that material and it can be smooth much more smooth compared to a mountain bite hard tail and that’s because the loads going through it are a little bit less so the designers can make it more comfortable so it’s only designed around a 40 mil Fork so the load screwing screen the front end can be less likewise the back end we’re only designing it around a 50 mil Tire on this bike so there’s less loads going through compared to a hardcore hard tail with 150 mil fork and clearance for 2.7 in tires most gravel bikes come with 700 C Wheels some of these gravel bikes offer the ability to run a 650b or 27.5 wheel instead but with a much chubbier tire so the outside diameter eventually is about the same but you’ve got more cautioning and more plushness from the high volume Tire now talking about tires lots of the modern ones will take really big tires and I say big and I mean in big in a road term because well 50 mil width or about 2 in isn’t that big by modern mountain bike standards if you’re old like me that’s a fairly good size mountain bike tire from about 25 or 30 years ago and for Ries it’s huge but for us mountain bikers it is a little bit slim but it offers plenty of grip on the good gravel bikes you’ve got all those Decades of experience and knowledge that make modern mountain bikes bikes handle really well off-road so there’s no stinky toe overlap or steep head angles that make downhills shocking no modern gravel bikes actually handle off-road really nicely and it’s got proper brakes because it’s got disc brakes too and as a mountain bike you’ll recognize this one by drivetrain quite well because well it’s pretty much a mountain bik drive train give or take the bigger chain ring here okay if you’re hold out to 2 by those are available too but for off-road riding a one by system like this offers a lot and you’re not missing out on much either this bike comes with a gravel suspension fork and whilst it does look a little bit like a 9s suspension Fork from a mountain bike I can confirm that it’s not because well the quality of travel is much better the quality of damping is much much better it’s much stiffer because it’s got a bolt through so it will actually steer around corners and thanks to modern technology it also won’t need to be serviced weekly it does only have 40 mil of travel but like the rest of the frame it’s not designed to gobble up hug Rock Gardens that you’d find on World Cup Downhill tracks no it’s designed to take the edge of things and smooth them out okay they’re still controversial some people don’t think you need them but I think they do smooth stuff out so if you’re more into your single track on your gravel bike they’re probably quite [Music] fun so they’re just gravel specific aren’t they uh no okay their name does come from a hangover of their early development when they were developed for well gravel roads but but the variety and well huge different terrains that you can tackle on a gravel bike is well probably one of the best things about them you can do so much on one bike malow trails and single track yeah can do riding to Trails well depending on how far away yep can do multi-day bike packing trips or longdistance gravel routes yep can do front door Adventures be that exploring your local OS map or just blitzing around yep can do Road Loop to tune up for summer or avoid the worst of the winter Trails yep can do so yes you can stick to gravel tracks and the gravel that the name comes from of this initial conception of gravel bikes but it’s so broad of what you can do it’s probably easy to describe what you can’t do on a gravel bike and well we are a mountain bike channel so we should be upfront and straight and honest no you’re not going to slay mountain bike trails especially gnarly technical single track on a gravel bike but you will be genuinely surprised about the techn trails that you can clear on such skinny tires and well initially odd-shaped bars and I think that’s what’s really interesting is that the skills boost that you can get by riding one of these off-road on relatively technical single track because when you switch back to your mountain bike with all its features of long travel and bigger tires and lower pressure well it feels incredible it feels like a Magic Carpet so when you come back to grab a bike it’s really good and unsurprisingly yes those slightly skinny for mountain bik or slightly fat tires for Ries and the drop bars mean that it do eat up the miles on well sealed surfaces be those proper tarmac roads or gravel or that new Co stuff called narac gravel bikes by their very nature are pretty simple okay this one’s got a suspension Fork on to make it slightly more complex but relatively they’re simple and that means small changes can make a really big difference what do I mean what am I talking about I’m talking about optimization I know fun geeky stuff so changing out a tire maybe even just a front tire to something a little bit more meaty is going to mean that single track and the off-road stuff is going to be well that much more fun likewise just changing out handle bar which okay with a Bart tape might look like a over over the toop task but can change your bike radically and for the better so you can get much more flared bars with smaller drops and it means off-road well they’re really fun you’ve got got more leverage and you’ve got more clearance for bike bags so if you’re going bike packing there’s lots more space so I think that’s one thing that I really really like about bikes especially ones so simple like a gravel bike is that these small changes to tires or bars can make a really big difference on the trail or the gravel road or the other Road or uphill or downhill or pave Road or narac [Music] or we’ve touched done bike packing before just talking about how useful and versatile the bikes are and you can do it and I’ve got to say bike packing is an absolute Hoot the idea of spending a night out under the stars in the right weather conditions of course is yeah really fun and the first few times that you do your bike packing and you strap far too much stuff to your bike it might feel well slightly counterintuitive to the minimal Vibes that we’ve already discussed but once you get your setup sorted the gravel bike is a great well gateway to more bike package not only because they’ve got more parts to to strap to but many of the bikes actually come with dedicated bags or designed bags that fit in just right and if you’re very keen on bike packing and you’re looking for some midwinter inspiration well make sure you subscribe to the channel because we’ve got lots and lots of bik packing videos on [Music] there less is more is a minimalist Mantra and I know what you’re thinking why are we talking philosophy we want to know about gravel bikes we care about bikes but just bear with me a little bit because gravel bikes are really good as a metaphor for a minimalist approach to life and they can bring a lot to your mountain biking too so minimalism is all about reducing things down but it’s not about sacrificing no it’s more about quality over quantity and it’s also about kind of slimming things down and eliminating the distraction so you can focus on well the moment that you’re in I know it sounds a bit Zen but I think this is where gravel bites can be really good because there’s less going on you can concentrate more about well where you are on the trail and getting out into the middle of nowhere and enjoying the wonders of nature more often and more easily and I think that’s a really good thing I think for me it’s that thing of less the bike the more it makes of the trail so if you’ve got kind of mediocre trails nearby with a gravel bike there are amazing trails nearby hopefully you’ve now picked up that I have a passion for gravel and yeah I have read the comments on some of our videos and I think some of you think that I’m saying it that well I really like gravel bikes and I love gravel bikes because I’m being paid to do so and well that’s not the case I ride gravel bikes in my own time um I do genuinely love gravel bikes and I think it’s because they work on lots of lots of trails and they work with lots and lots of people and that for me is a really good thing so it’s like this Gateway entry point to mountain bike in because if you’ve got a roadie friend or you’ve got a friend who’s not that confident on riding trails well riding a gravel bike with them means that you feel the trails are really engaging and they’ll enjoy the ride to the trail head and you can enjoy well your local Trails probably a little bit more because being under biked well it’s got a bit of a bad RP but actually I think it’s a really good thing as long as you’re not going wild and damaging your bike of course but being under bikes so riding a gravel bike on you know light single track can be really fun it’s a really good skills booster and well I definitely need a skills booster you’ve seen how I’ve ride at Bike Park Wales and I need all the help I can get and riding senine single track on a gravel bike with slightly odd bars and very skinny tires is a really good way of upskilling with slightly lower risks than going to your average bike park what else is good about gravel well there’s those front door Adventures I talked about before where well I don’t have the best trails nearby which I’d love to have but realistically I don’t whereas the gravel bike can make those Trails feel much much more exciting which is a good thing and well there’s those overnight Adventures too which are really fun and I think this is one of the take-home messages that I really want to hammer home is that well yes a gravel bike is not a mountain bike so no you’re not going to slay single track like you can do on your mountain bike but a it will make your mountain bike feel better and B you’ll probably ride with more people and riding with more people is a good thing and when you’re riding with them you can well Hammer home that mountain biking is really really good so get people into gravel get people tempted by single track get them out on a gravel bike let me know in the comments if you think this is good bad or indifferent