Have a gravel tour planned in October and a week off...

Can't face long gravel and B road days on the MTB with flat bars
Have a perfectly good CX bike but it's a bit racey and only 1x9 so found it hard work loaded up before

Was thinking of picking up an old touring bike, strip it down a bit, better tyres, flared bars, raid of the spares bin and a plaid shirt. Any reason this would not work just grand? Only real compromise I see is lack of disc brakes and a bit of weight? Potentially this is cheaper than changing all the gearing on my CX bike! Not wanting to spend much

Old school touring bike on gravel roads - why wouldn’t it work? It’s worked for ever up until now so it’ll probably keep on working. Nothing wrong with canti’s or V brakes either, especially for what is essentially road riding.
If you are either tall or short there are some bargain Dawes Galaxy’s or Super G’s on eBay just now.

Yeah was looking at them , I’m not exactly tall

I do sort of hate cantis but think I could live with them for this

restlessshawn wrote: ↑Sat Feb 29, 2020 11:27 am Yeah was looking at them , I’m not exactly tall

I do sort of hate cantis but think I could live with them for this

Yeah canti’s aren’t great but they will do the job. V’s are a little better and cheap as well.
I

My gravel bike is my tourer. I'm sure I'm missing some essential element but it seems to work fine.

I'm occasionally tempted by something newer but a 11 year old Van Nicholas Amazon turns out to be remarkably proficient. I had a Kona Sutra before that and would happily use that too if I'd kept it. For a 14-15 year old design it turns out to have been well ahead of its time.



You could always fit a disc brake fork if you were fussy about stopping power.

#gradventourer for the win!

My tourer is my gravel bike! In my case it's a 2016 Kona Sutra with either the original Clement MSO or WTB Nano's. 3x9, bar end shifters and slightly flared bars. Maybe a bit heavier than more modern designs of graadventourer, but I'm not going anywhere fast.

Before I had this my previous gradventourer was (still is sometimes) a 1996 Univega Alpina with 26 in wheels (natch) and a 3X8 drivetrain. At the moment running Marathon Mondials in 50mm flavour. Bars were cut down to about 600mm wide with L shaped bar ends mouned inside the grips to get a norrower more "aero" position. Now got Fleegles and Ergon GP3 grips. So maybe differnt tyres, bars and inboard mounted bar ends could be a compromise? Then again N+1

What I'm trying to say is maybe a retro rigid MTB from that era might be an option too?

How about going retro? Some time ago I bought a late 50's Mercia Randonneur - 650b an' everything. I'll get round to sorting out it at some point. Recall that I paid about £150 for it. Bit like this one.

What I'm trying to say is maybe a retro rigid MTB from that era might be an option too?

it's a possibility if I could get drops to work ok on it

How about going retro?

yeah i'm thinking 70s-80s tourer

that Mercia is lovely!

I do have a 1960s Mercian but it's only got 2 gears and it's very flexy so I'd fear for it loaded on gravel. It's like wrestling a bowl of spagetti if you get out the saddle

The plan has domestic approval, week in October booked off work, route planned, now I just need to combine alcohol and ebay*

*I did this before and bought 2 Moto Guzzis in the same weekend