So what is gravel biking? Well like many areas of our sport gravel biking as we
know it today grew up in the US where there's large areas of unmade roads and
lots of people that want to explore. But in its purest form gravel biking is
literally taking your bike and ride in wherever you want to go. If you want to
ride on the roads, you can ride on the road, if you fancy just nipping off on to
the nearest bridleway, well do it, if you want to ride up your
nearest hill, just do it, obviously as long as it's
legal. But you can go ride wherever you want to go. So how does a bike built
specifically for gravel riding differ from a standard road bike? Because to the
casual observer they look fairly similar. This is Orro Terra C carbon fibre
gravel road bike and there's a few differences between this and the
standard road bike that make it really really good for riding on off-road
terrain. If we start of by looking at the frame, Orro actually incorporate
different materials to the carbon fibre to give it a better impact protection in
certain areas. They also tweak the geometry a little bit so one of the
things that it's really really important is that you have a good upright position
to keep you safe on sort of harder terrain so head tube wise, we're talking
about a slightly longer head tube and then the whole wheelbase, so the length
of the bike is a little bit longer than a standard road bike to give you better
off-road stability. One of the other differences you'll find is that the use
of a disc brake allows for much greater clearances between the fork and the
frame so therefore we can actually ride with a much larger tyre so better
cushioning, better grip... Well it also means as well is you can run a huge tire
as well as running mud guards. So for a bit of versatility this increases the
range of the gravel bike. Talking about wheels and disc brakes: obviously one of
the biggest differences between here and a normal road bike is in terms of the
wheels themselves, so we have in general stronger wheels suited to actually ride
in on these off-road conditions and one of the other benefits of having a disc
brake is been able to run a bike with thru-axles so this gives you a much
stronger position and much stronger wheel. Obviously the tyres are very very
different to a normal road bike. We can have treaded tyres or as
we have on here more of a hybrid style tyres so really this tyre is suited for
any style of riding, smooth in the centre with a bit of grip on the outside to
give us a bit sort of more comfort and control off roads. If we talk about the
rest of the bike there are here again a few differences as well. Often a gravel
bike will come with a slightly wider handlebar. Now we know that obviously a
narrower handlebar is better for aerodynamics and normal bike fit
position but a wider handlebar gives you much better control offroad. Looking at
gearing: gearing on this bike is a standard compact so we've got a 50/34 in
the front and 11/28 out of the back. Some will come with lower gearing than that
but in general if you want to use a bike all-around so on the road and off roads
this is ideal for use. The other final difference that we've done on here is
for riding off roads we've changed to mountain bike pedals, double sided
Shimano pedal here. This allows you to use mountain bike shoes with better grip
for those off-road situations. The key word when it comes to gravel bikes is
versatility, just because it's ideally suited for riding off-road doesn't mean
to say it doesn't make a perfect road bike as well. There's only one way to
truly experience gravel biking that's to go on a bit of an adventure.
I've got Craig with me today now he's never ridden a gravel bike so what we're
gonna do is we're gonna go and have a bit of fun and find out exactly what he
feels about it. You ready to go? Yeah! Okay, let's go!
So your first taste of gravel riding? What do you think? Well it's pretty
awesome actually I'm gonna say. It's a bit sketchy at times but that's part of
the challenge I felt. Yeah. What was the most sketchy bit about it then?
Definitely descending on the gravel. Not really used to the road challenging you
as much so it threw some obstacles in the way. Also I was a bit
concerned about like travelling over the the gravel especially with the carbon
bike. Is that big problem? That's the great thing about carbon bikes is that
they've built strong enough to actually withstand all of these things
something like Orro Terra C here has got an Innegra layer which is an extra
sort of like shock absorbent an impact resistant layer so if the stones do
actually hit it, it does tend to actually sort like bounce off so you
shouldn't really worry at all about this strength or integrity of carbon. Yeah.
Do you reckon you'll do it again? Definitely!