In a bid to ascertain the limits of a gravel bike, Steve Shrubsall heads to North Wales to tackle Cycling UK’s recently opened, 125-mile Trans-Snowdonia route
The best bike rides, for me, are the ones that you aren’t quite certain of finishing. Your fate is unknown. Getting to the end, if it ever comes, will require a liberal quota of physical and psychological distress. You will sweat, you will toil, you will swear, you might even scream. Finally, after rage, rage raging against the dying of the (day)light, the finishing line miraculously hoves into view. Cue an unrivalled sense of accomplishment, the satisfaction of a job tremendously well done. Well, that’s the best-case scenario anyway – and it’s what I was hoping for when, in mid-April, I set the controls for North Wales.
Cycling UK’s latest off-road challenge, the Traws Eryri (pronounced trouse eh-ruhree) – or Trans-Snowdonia, in English – was my first ‘I might not actually complete this’ ride of the year. Firstly, it takes place on unforgiving Snowdonian terrain; secondly, it’s 125 miles long with 4,000 metres of vertical gain; and thirdly (and perhaps most crucially) I’d be tackling what is essentially billed as a mountain bike ride on a gravel bike. Why? Well, quite.
Why is a question that, while not necessarily keeping me awake at night, has been playing on my mind since gravel bikes first found their way over to the UK from across the pond. What exactly are these bicycles for? They aren’t quite road bikes, they aren’t quite mountain bikes. They bear passing resemblance to cyclo-cross bikes – but good heavens, they most definitely aren’t. Surely these mutant machines haven’t been manufactured solely for the purpose of being ridden exclusively on gravel because, if that were the case, I’d be paying out three-odd grand to do lengths of my neighbour’s driveway. In taking on the Traws Eryri I’d be putting a gravel bike – Giant’s Revolt X Advanced Pro – to the test and finding out how capable they actually are.
Mauled by Moelfre
I started the route from the north in the walled market town of Conwy in North Wales. The sun shone as I threaded my way from the castle and through the clamouring streets of the tourist-filled town. The air was imbued with a brackish quality from the Irish Sea and for five minutes it almost felt like I was on holiday in Majorca – the 42mm tyres of my Giant Revolt X buzzing pleasingly along smooth asphalt streets. Then I came to the first off-road section and it no longer felt like I was on holiday in Majorca. It felt more like I’d cycled into a reenactment of the Battle of the Bulge.
Steep singletrack booby trapped with thick, lumberlike roots was the new normal as I engaged my 52-tooth sprocket and winched my way to what I’d
