WHAT’S THE GRIND WITH GRAVEL?
There’s absolutely nothing at all new about riding bikes offroad, even bikes with skinny tyres and dropped handlebars. Cyclists have been doing just that ever since bikes were invented, and way before surfaced roads became popular.
Even the original Tour de France was in no small part held on dirt roads. Over a hundred years ago riders scrambled their way through the wilds of the Alps and Pyrenees, and they raced on single speed bikes with rod brakes for hundreds of kilometres a day. This was, of course, long before the advent and sanity of the modern uplift. So, just how is it that gravel riding and gravel bikes have taken off to the extent they have in recent years?
The term “gravel bike” is new; that’s for sure, and it was probably something that came out of an
