GRAVEL VS XC

Gravel bikes are appearing on mountain bike trails all over the country – it’s time to shave our legs, pull on a tattoo sleeve and find out what all the fuss is about

Until very recently, gravel was something you shovelled onto the driveway. Now though – in case you’ve been burying your head in a pile of it recently – it’s a kind of riding. One that blurs the lines between XC mountain biking, cyclo-cross, and road riding. To their proponents (and they now include once mtb-only stalwarts like Evil and most recently, YT Industries) gravel bikes deliver the kind of speed-over-the-ground thrills of a road bike, but on natural terrain and flowy singletrack. To their detractors, they are road bikes out of their element and the best way to spoil a good mountain bike ride.

So who has it right? Time for mbr to step in and deliver a verdict on gravel riding… totally unbiased, of course. You can completely disregard the fact that we’re a mountain bike magazine.

GRAVEL'S HIGH GROUND

Let’s get serious for a moment though, and consider whether there actually could be some advantages to riding gravel bikes on certain trails. We often hear how mountain bikes are so good now they dumb down trails that were once difficult or exciting. Could gravel bikes fill that space, delivering an even faster and more thrilling ride than the best XC bikes, covering more ground and with less effort?

Bike companies are smart too, it’s not a coincidence that gravel bikes now have lots of the components that make mountain bikes great. Suspension, disc brakes, squidgy tyres. We’ll get to that next, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the gap between the two disciplines was smaller than we first thought.