Throughout the coming year I’ll be road-testing this new (to me) Oxford Bike Works Outlander, culminating in late August by entering the 2024 Ascend Armenia bikepacking race on it. The bike has been built from the ground up for long-distance off-road riding, sitting somewhere between a gravel bike, a rigid mountain bike, and an expedition tourer. In keeping with the OBW philosophy, the priorities are strength, durability and simplicity with a highly tailored fit and spec, and in this case additional emphasis on speed. Specs to follow soon.
More about Oxford Bike Works and Richard’s range of offerings at https://www.oxfordbikeworks.co.uk
I am in Abington near Oxford at Oxford bik Works where um I’ve popped in to see Richard I usually do this about once a year um last year it was to upgrade my Expedition bike uh which I wrote about quite a bit on the blog this year I picking up something completely
Different well it’s still a bicycle but it’s uh it’s a very different type of bike um and I have a particular um ride in mind for for this one so Richard would you like to introduce this bike that we’re looking at so this is this is the Oxford Bike Works Outlander
It’s for off-road it’s for track single track it’s for Jeep tracks it’s for the type of terrain that you’re probably not going to want to take your gravel bike on and there’s no reason why this shouldn’t become a Touring bike either you know with with schw Marathon pluses
On it and um and uh paner rxs and all sorts so it’s every bike you could ever want it to be in this particular guys it’s a it’s a 650b wheel size with uh hydraulic disc brakes Dior rear deria SLX shifter um a massive 11 to 46 to uh cassette and um a
38 to uh chain ring at the front we’ve also we’ve put um Continental race King tires on it 2 in wide for uh for Tom Allen and his ascend Armenia race uh in is it August end of August end of August and the idea of this bike is to build
Something simple strong light and reasonably fast it’s going to have its ultimate test I think really uh i’ be very interested to see how you get on with it in that in in that context people come to me and they tell me what they’re going to do with their bike and
We then devise it from the ground up so in this case this bike is is um is with Armenian off-road terrain in mind and uh it’s been specked exactly that way these bikes aren’t built until we’ve had the conversation um and that that enables um that enables things to be exactly right
Some of the key components that that we’ve stuck with uh a Philip braced handbuilt frame uh made by Lee Cooper in centry uh handbuilt Wheels built by me um the other thing we’ve really worked on is getting all the the brons right um and although there aren’t um cargo
Mounts on the forks on this example that’s part of the offering and uh a customer that wants that all they have to do is is mention it and and they’re added despite the fact that they’re completely handbuilt from the ground up £2,200 gets you a really well Dior
Equipped top quality bike that’s going to properly fit you and last years and years and years cool thank you I’m looking forward to riding it cool so there we go uh got my brand new Ox bik Works Outlander um now just to get it to
Armenia so I can uh try and ride 1100 km in 8 Days flat with all my gear strapped to it anyway yeah let uh see what this new bike has to offer um when I get it out on the trails