The Wildest Bikes at UK’s Biggest Gravel Event

Some of the coolest bikes and new tech from last weekend’s Grittiest gravel race event in mid-Wales. https://gritfest.co.uk

Content
00:00 Intro
1:40 Sturdy 3D printed gravel bike
4:44 Mad aero gravel bike
6:23 New Reilly Ti gravel bike
7:37 Cool Moots Routt gravel bike
9:01 WTB gravel tyres tech chat
12:39 New Tailfin bags
18:35 Cervelo Aspero test report

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I just returned from riding the UK’s original and Premier gravel event called a grip Fest and had a great time A real blast riding amazing trails in mid Wales and I checked out some of the cool bikes being ridden by people at the event and also checked out the new products from WTB and talin and gave the new cell espar one final test before it goes back tomorrow now grit Fest has been going since 2018 which I attended which seems an awfully long time time ago and back then when gravel was fairly new there were people fear mongering that it was a fad but as my attendant at event this weekend showed it’s definitely not a f it’s h to stay and brighter and bigger and Bolder and more exciting than ever before and what my attendance at the event showed is that the format for this event works really well they use an uro format popular in motor biking and rally where you have short time sections within a long distance route so rather than race 200 Mi flat out like Unbound you’re racing shorter time sections within that long distance route and what the format means is you can race those sections flat out as fast as you like if you’re a competitive person and then regroup with your riding Pals for the linking stages between and have a more sociable relaxed approach to those bits between the racy bits or if you’re like me ride the whole thing at a steady pace and just enjoy a good day on the bike filing himself coming in oh it’s Dave hi mate mate but now let’s look at some of the the cool bikes that grab my attention and we’re being ridden and race at this event so who are you and what are you riding uh Ryan beas and I’m riding a Tom sturdy Siller uh Thai 3D printed bike pretty special yeah yeah no um yeah I think it’s I think it’s named after his his late mother okay uh she’s bit of an adventure soul I think um yeah and it’s tribute to her um yeah absolutely love it absolutely love it and it’s Pack full of unique details isn’t it like Han stem the brake levers the cranks that’s itst everything pretty much Tom’s made uh yeah bottom Brack uh yeah bars he’s customized the the levers even down to the disc brake rot uh oh the um Center lock yeah Center locks yeah uh so how’s it ride what were you riding before this and I’ve had a number of bikes all carbon really I haven’t rode TI for for years um yeah I mean I I I’ve been using big tires up till probably this event really but yeah it’s fast really fast I don’t really notice the difference it you know from carbon to to this to be honest um put smile on you know that it’s it’s you know like to I know Tom well he’s a good friend of mine and it’s just nice ride in a bike that he’s made and you know made in UK and yeah it’s a beautiful bit of care it gets noticed everywhere I go really um that’s talk about equipment you got got some uh WTB tires on how wide and what Trad have you gone for uh 45s do you normally run wide tires it’s 45 kind of stand I don’t to go anything lower than or narrower than 40 okay yeah um I do like to smash the down I do enjoy like yes you know I’m not getting any faster on the uphill so it’s nice to actually give you know send it on the downhills and with a 40 you got to you know you got to be a bit sort of um gentle with them but with the 45s 40 you know anything over 43 44 there you know you just Go full gas so uh yeah always have ridden sort of anything up to or from 44 yeah I do like the the tan on him it’s a nice tan I think it does complement the the bike like looks very special so we’re at grit Fest I know you’ve done loads of GRA events CU you’re a busy uh racing cyclist what’s next on your radar what’s a big Target this year for you with this bike I assume you’re r on this bike the whole season all year yeah so uh big plan well plan is to go to the worlds in in October I’m going to give that a crack I did I went out there last year for the year it was the same event but it was the Euros last year uh G valo and yeah and you qualified as see you yeah yeah where did you qualified I qualified there in in Belgium oh W I didn’t have I did go do the grow this year but uh I didn’t have much luck had a couple of issues and big crash and kind of things but yeah so I didn’t qualify there but yeah still going so qualify so it w no big drama but um yeah that’s the plan do that and I think there is one more UCI event in North Wales the week before where that’s going to go I don’t know but yeah plan to do that um yeah and like with family commitments and it you just you know see how the weekends go if you know got fre weekend I’ll see what’s about like well best of luck for this season in the world bik appreciate it my name is uh rich and can you tell me about your amazing bike setup and and that rear disc what’s that all about well it’s from a company called uh es gains um it’s actually just a it’s actually a cover on a standard on a standard wheel I see it’s a hunt carbon wheel yep so it’s a very lightweight wheel anyway and it’s an a gain cover over the top so it’s uh it’s definitely faster it sound good it sounds cool it’s been heavily tested in Wind tunnels yeah so it’s a it’s a really good bit of Kit I need all the advantages I can get you look fast anyway what’s the cor all about is that custom carbon fiber more a little bit more Arrow no you can’t actually with a chaming this small you can’t actually get uh an arrow cover for it so it’s just it’s just some special plastic tape I put on there all right so quite a creative person when it com to your bik set up very Hands-On yeah I set it up mainly for the GRC really okay and it was definitely quicker on the on the flatter sections yeah well why not you know if try and get every Advantage you can get absolutely yeah I don’t see uh why you shouldn’t Che your bike up sort of to the Max and what’s the what is the bike chanelli is it’s a chanelli side deco King yeah unfortunately I can’t get the cables inside the frame that is one drawback but um see yeah got a little the flatter bars AO gloves AO socks going for a good uh result today yeah it be nice yeah yeah always have a good go so just have to see what happens and keep trying hi I’m Petra wilcher I work and ride for Riley Cycle Works and you’re riding a very cool bike today yes this is the new reflex which is just being cleaned at the moment um this is the extra small um so it’s our sort of Arrow our latest bike our aerrow bike we’ve obviously got the gradient in the gravel range as well um this is supposed to be our racy one so investment casted and um yeah I’ve got some special Forks that have been done um in the Formula 1 paint shop from Mercedes um these are our aerrow bars okay and um yeah I’m running a mixture a Shram force with a rival cassette on the back and 1144 and I’m running actually a 38 tooth uh chain ring on the front just to help my legs on the climb with str’s uh gravel ultra plus uh wheels at the moment and how wide you gone on tires you got big I’ve gone 45s actually um yeah the gra Kings were perfect for this they work really well today I’m getting used to them and they do they do roll really well um and I’m quite impressed with how they do they grip on the corners I I was a bit unsure but I they’ve got a good profile so um yeah I’m quite pleased with them my name is Hoy and I am riding a moots Route 45 today and what’s cool about it you got a silver grx I see got a grx limited edition on there yep I’m running red shift on the back and on the front to give me a bit of um compliance on the rougher gravel sections make it a little bit less gnarly and what TIR how wi and TIR he going for got 45 mm and they are um renie hearse oh nice yeah they’re some big Nobles aren’t they they are they’re getting a bit less big of the back and you said just now off camera you fed the a quip release in your seat post yeah I was I was doing the um grinduro last year and the last segment was a severe downhill route so I thought right I need to drop a post or I need a quick release so I can quickly pull that out and slam the saddle down that’s a really good idea yeah it’s something that every bike every mountain bike used to have one yeah you don’t see them anymore but um wolf race make that so yeah and you had fun today great absolutely fantastic yeah yeah why why is it so good as an event for you it’s the people yeah the people are real gravel Racers they everyone’s so friendly the route is brutal but um you get at the end of it you have a couple of beers and so so enjoyable fantastic yeah yeah it’s cool thank very much no problem so James what’s the best tire for Welsh gravel uh honestly for us we see kind of two different ways of looking at it so grit Fest you bring in mountain bikers who are doing a bit of gravel racing and then you bring people from the road scene as well um and what we what we tend to find is uh people coming in from the mountain bike side uh going for something like the sandero or the Resolute bit more familiar to them what they to kind of the tread they’d have on a mountain bike um you know gives them a bit of Peace of Mind especially when they’re pushing on on the descents uh and then you see uh people come over from Road biking kind of want a tire that is again a bit more familiar something that looks a little bit more like a Road tire so a lower tread a rounder profile so something like the vulpine um yeah really rounded uh so rolls nice and fast on the tarmac and then you’ve got the Riddler which again is something pretty similar to that you know it’s rounded uh small blocks in the middle so rolls really fast and then some uh you know raised edges so when you’re leaning you’ve got a bit of extra there for uh is that because Ro’s more concerned about speed and man is more concerned about grip um probably yeah they can kind of play to their strength so the Ries you know tend to be the better Peddlers and they you know they’re going to make the most of that by having a a bike setup that works with that whereas the mountain bikers you know they want to Corner fast because they’re used to that you know Offroad and um so yeah they’re kind of tailoring their bike setup to kind of suit their riding style okay what about TI width what’s The Sweet Spot these day 40 4 wider wider and wider every year it seems to be wider and wider um so yeah we’ve uh we’ve got a bunch of new 45 mil tires coming out in the next couple of weeks so yeah look out for that but yeah 45 mil seems to be the one you know it fit there’s a lot of uh bikes that’ll fit that now um so yeah we’re basically expanding the range to to make the most give people what they want they want they want bigger tires what’s your view on mixing and matching like bigger tie in the front faster roll and tie in the back yeah um yeah we actually see that uh through OE sales as well so if your brands are specking like a a knobby Tire on the front and something a bit Slicker on the back um or slightly bigger volume on the front generally the limiting factor on the bike is the is the rear triangle for for width so if you can get uh you know a bigger tire in the forks then that’s going to give you kind of a little bit more uh I don’t know almost like Tire suspension through the bars and then you’re still uh you know you maximizing your your gap on the rear but yeah on the front you’re getting more control you’re getting a bit more Comfort um yeah absolutely it’s spec on OE and then everybody sees that and they kind of following that okay that along um it’s a a tire that’s kind of is most popular in your range uh the Riddler um it’s actually it’s an early gravel tire anyway um so this was specked again OE on a lot of bikes and people like to buy what they’re familiar with if it came on their bike they buy it the vulpine has really taken off um I don’t know the exact numbers but it’s right up there now catching up with a riddler and it’s barely been specked on bikes yet maybe a few in the last year or so but we’re talking you know seven eight years with the Riddler so it’s been around a long time um but yeah Vine’s definitely catching up um are we are we mainly talking 700 here not 650 we’re talking about 700s yeah um 650 seems to be uh on a on a decline it yeah um yeah we do some nice treads for 650 so we’re not going to stop you know there’s a lot of people out there that have that size okay um but yeah our focus is uh at the moment or everything we seem to be looking at moving forward is uh looking after the the 700c and wi Tire wi Tire Market fantastic thank you very much worri so carrying stuff on gravel bikes is a big business and we here with telfin and you got some new frame packs show us yeah we’ve got um basically we launched them a couple of months ago so we’ve got nine sizes of frame bags that we’ve just launched and these are mainly for drop handar geometry so gravel road bikes uh split into six half frame bags so like the full length and then three wedge which allow you to run like a much bigger bottle at the back so depends on like what you want to carry really as to what’s the best but yeah it took us 3 years years to get to this point uh so we started off the process by asking our uh customer base to sending photos of their bikes with uh like their bottles so we could then like sort of create we created some like software some custom software that basically pulled all these photos so we had like over 600 bikes come in yeah then we pull those photos in and they give us a heat map so it gave us like the starting point to actually sort of like get to the the first like size and then we can work out what sizes we needed wow and then we’ suddenly realized that we don’t well we can’t just have like two or three it had to be like nine sizes n and it’s that N9 for now it be more in the future now okay yeah so technically there’s actually a 10th one launching relatively soon that we’re just going to pull into it but then we’re also going to be doing like sort of more specific for about geometry so hard tail geometry is slightly different to like gravel um and so therefore like we probably going to be bringing out some more I haven’t got a date yet but it’s we’re working on it okay so this your bike here should we have a quick look at a typical setup I guess this got a full well not the full but tile setup yeah this is basically um just an example of like sort of some of the products we do so obviously on a ride like today uh you may be it’s a bit overkilled to have like our era Pac on the back here but um I’ve got on here is this is our smallest of the zip top tube bags so we do five different uh top tube bags there’s three zip sizes and two with a flip top that we’ve actually created ourselves um personally this is one for me because I get knee rub and so this is a 0.8 liter and it tapers vertically so it tapers this way it tapers this way so we’ve mapped it so it should reduce the chances of knee rub as much as possible um it uses our vmount so these are our kind of like P patented fittings and as you can see here it is totally Rock Solid and that’s even without a front strap so we don’t need any front straps on these bags and the other nice thing with the vmx then is it protects your frame so you don’t have to like worry about any sort of tape on your frame or anything it literally will actually stay in place so well that you can have a beautiful frame and it will stay beautiful going down below we’ve got um the frame bag so what makes our frame bags different to every other frame bag on the market is two main things obviously are vmount so the way it attaches this means that basically it will not move and it shares the same spacing as the top G bag so you can share straps so makes it look super nice and clean yeah um then inside obviously we’re uh we’re known for like sort of like introducing a lot of technology and a lot of things into it so inside the frame base you have two carbon rods so there’s a carbon rod on each side and in the top is also a carbon space frame so effectively what this does it cradles the zip which helps to support it so it means it works completely one-handed oh well and then the another nice thing with it as well is that prevents bulging so if you’re somebody that likes like stuff loads of stuff into your frame bag but suffers from knee rub that will eliminate that as an issue does it add weight though minimal it’s carbon so yes you you know they’re not the lightest on the market but the fact is that they stay in place okay they don’t bulge they hopefully have the most reliable zips on the market at the moment um and yeah like I said what we’ve done as well is this carbon frame if you don’t like it if it’s a bit too stiff for you or anything else like that you can actually remove them yourself oh that’s so they come out through the hydration port on the front of the the pack so you can tune it how you want it really so if you want to make it a little bit lighter you can make it lighter and this is the 4.5 l so it’s slap bang right in the middle but what we’ve done as well on our website is if you go to the frame bag page there’s a really cool sizing tour so you can take a photo of your bike and then upload it and then drag in our different frame bags and you can see exactly which one fits that’s cool so that helps because obviously with nine different sizes that can be a little bit tricky to work out which one is the best and this is original product which kick started the company yeah years ago seven years ago this particular one the a pack was uh started in 2016 they still the most popular produ in the range this the one like no help for so exactly it’s the it’s the arch so this is effectively what we call a stabilized seat pack so it’s got a fully waterproof roll top bag on the top uh there’s direct access as well which is really good so you don’t have to undo you can actually see my fetching little uh blanket in there um but the nice thing as well is it’s compatible with the majority of bikes so uh it uses our axle you swap your ax over so this is our particular axle which then allows it to be completely quick release so what you do you pop this front bit pull the two little pins and then it comes off so super easy to do super quick everything is modular so everything is replaceable this is our carbon fiber version and we also do another one with pan mounts so you can run side peners and we also do aluminium as well which is obviously much more economical in terms of price but performance- wise exactly the same lots of products for lots of applications absolutely perfect thank you much no worries okay let me give you a quick look at the bike I chose for the event today and I went with the sell esparo the new one I reviewed a few weeks ago link up above and down below in case you missed it and definitely a good bike for this course the sparrow is at the racer end of the spectrum and that really match the course well definitely helped me go as fast as possible quite aggressive geometry aerodynamic profiles a Wheels as well and yeah work really well there were a few quite tricky bits where a more Progressive slacker bigger tide ground bike might have been better or maybe even a mountain bike but it got me around with no uh sketchy moments so were not too many sketchy moments anyway um so all good some comments on the equipment so 40 mil wide WTB vulpine tires a very fast rolling tie but good cornering grip definitely a tire on the faster end of of the tie Spectrum uh there were a few section where I wanted a bigger tie for more comfort and a bit more grippiness from the tie tread as well nice a Wheels pretty tough Wheels I definitely ding the rim on a few rocks um I didn’t punch her so that’s all good and no damage to the wheels or spokes so all held up very well indeed swam rival explore group set with a 1044 cassette was mostly okay there were a few climbs I wish I had a eagle cassette or something a bit bigger I was using that 44 quite a bit uh but nice range of gears and even use a 10 too as well a few times and good chain retention meant the chain didn’t drop at all and no chain device was needed but there is a mount for one if you want to go for one for a bit of extra security comfort from the bike is pretty good actually nice round 27.2 mil seat post and quite Dro uh top tube and the rear days gives lots of Po flex and did give a fairly smooth ride not the smoothest riding bike in the gravel space but uh wasn’t rough or harsh at all and for equipment I used a saddle bag with my spare tools and bits and Bobs in there and a silker hanar bag for my snacks and spare clothing and I used the new Hammerhead crew 3 and because I forgot to charge it I had 20% when I started a ride so I switched on the battery saveing mode and 4 hours later I got 1% battery so pretty good pretty impressive that it led the entire ride anyway that’s a look at my bike and all the other bikes at grit Fest definitely an event you should put on your radar um and sign up for next year put link to the website down below and you want to see the review of the asaro then watch that video up there and of course don’t forget to subscribe by hitting that button right there but that is all for today I’ll see you again very soon