G is for Gravel

As a mountain biker from my teenage years, I'd developed a pretty strong anti-SPD sentiment, based mostly on which of the world cup DH racers clipped in and who ran on flat pedals. Poring over Mike Rose's photos on the pages of Dirt magazine, it was an easy choice - all the cool riders were on flats. Clipless pedals were the preserve of the skinsuits and peakless helmets brigade, who were sucking all the fun out of downhill and making everything a wee bit too... serious.  My first pair of clipless pedals were Look road pedals that came on a second hand Giant Defy. I still remember vividly that most inauspicious of starts - nipping along to Dales Cycles to buy a pair of Specialized shoes and a set of Look cleats, and barely making it ten metres from the front door before forgetting how to unclip and finding myself in a heap on the pavement on Calgary Street. After a wee while, I changed over to Shimano pedals, and found myself getting on a wee bit better with those.  Whe

Gravel tracks well within Glasgow postcodes. On the evening of Monday the 26th of March, 2020, the UK was placed on lockdown to try and stem the spread of the Coronavirus. Thankfully, the conditions of the lockdown allowed people to go outside for one period of daily exercise, within the locale of their home. This meant an end to driving up the road to places like Loch Ard or Inveruglas to start a ride, and would mean that for a city-dweller like myself, any gravel riding opportunities would be pretty severely restricted. Not to be disheartened, I decided it was time to set myself a wee challenge, to see what I could find on my doorstep and try to get onto whatever dirt was available. My initial thought was to try and limit rides to round about 50km, so as not to push myself too far, and to make sure that if things went wrong, I would be able to walk home without too much difficulty. Thankfully, also being a trail runner meant that I already had a bit of a familiarity with

At the top of the climb above Ardvorlich. I was faced with an unfortunate set of coincidences - just as the first cases of Coronavirus were starting to appear in the UK, my replacement CGR 725 was finally ready to see some trail action. With an afternoon to spare and some decent weather in the forecast, I drove to Inveruglas, about an hour from my flat to the banks of Loch Lomond with the hope of getting a wee spin round some promising lines on the map. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but this would be my last opportunity to make a real break from the city and get a good gravel adventure in before the lockdown put restrictions on peoples' ability to travel. Inveruglas is a popular wee spot, both with day trippers out on a jaunt looking for a view over to Ben Lomond, and with hillwalkers setting out for ascents of Ben Vane or Ben Vorlich. This ride would also be my first real adventure trying out my new Garmin Edge 530, and more specifically, trying out its navigational

Bikes parked in snowy conditions With a new bike arriving, inevitably the first couple of outings have to be "breaking in" runs, up and down local cycle paths and canal towpaths just to make sure the brake pads are bedded in, the gears are shifting nicely, and no unwanted noises are emanating from hidden corners of the frame. Eventually however, the time comes when the trial runs have to come to an end and the bike has to get its tyres dirty and get tried out on some real terrain.

Frame number one, on one of its earliest outings. This blog starts in a bit of a strange place. Around the time 2019 turned into 2020, I got the daft idea in my head to get myself a new road bike to replace my Giant Defy. A couple of browsing trips to local bike shops soon transformed that into the dafter idea still to go for one of the increasingly on-trend new gravel bikes, and thus save a bit of space by merging my road bike and mountain bike into one mythical do-everything machine.