The Caban Coch Dam stands before us. Its 35,530 megalitre reservoir is full to capacity and produces a waterfall that flows down to the Elan Valley visitor centre café where we’ve just demolished the remnants of today’s Bara brith fruit cake. For the fourth year in a row, we’ve come to Wales to decide the category winners and overall champ of our flagship Bike of the Year awards and, with quiet roads, mighty climbs and an abundance of road and gravel routes, it’s easy to see why.
For 2024, we’re riding alongside the awesome dams and rolling hills of the Elan Valley in mid-Wales that, even in relentless springtime rainfall, are a remarkable blend of innovative and ambitious engineering and stunning beauty. Which is also an apt description for many of our Bike of the Year contenders.
After months of bike testing, logistics and narrowing the best new bikes of 2024 down to a shortlist of 24, it’s time to debate and decide our category winners and the overall Bike of the Year for 2024.
Today’s team includes Ashley Quinlan, BikeRadar’s senior tech editor who has put budget bikes under the microscope. Dialling inpushing the case for 2024’s best race bikes, while top rider and regular model Nicola Lovell and editor Matt Baird offer their input on the five bikes. I [Senior Tech Ed Woz] will be presenting 2024’s best urban, gravel, and endurance models to the panel, as we take the bikes for one final blast in the epic Cambrian Mountains.
