Unpaved Podcast

Where has this gravel boom come from?

Episode Summary

Where as this off-road boom come from? Why is 'gravel' the current cycling buzz-word? Is it really something new? In our very first episode we join The Woods Cyclery in the New Forest for their Sunday shop ride, chatting to co-owner Tom Farrell alongside Brother Cycles co-owner Will Meyer.

Episode Notes

In our first episode of Unpaved Podcast we travelled to the beautiful New Forest on the South Coast to join The Woods Cyclery's Sunday shop ride. With co-owner Tom Farrell and co-owner of Brother Cycles, Will Meyer, we discussed exactly where this gravel boom has come from and more about their routes into the discipline, from BMX to Tour Divide.

If you'd like to try the route we rode in the New Forest, you can find it on our komoot account here. Let us know how you get on!

Thanks to our podcast sponsor, komoot, we can offer new users a free map region bundle! To claim your free region bundle as a new user of komoot, head over to https://www.komoot.com/account/gift/?code=UNPAVED .

Make sure you enter our giveaway to be in with a chance of winning a pair of tickets to Brother in the Wild by signing up to our newsletter here. You'll find full details and T&Cs on that page.

Read the episode transcript here.

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Cover art thanks to Tom Farrell (photography) and Hannah from Yoke Creative and Tim Wilkey (design), Music by Vegyn and LTO

Episode Transcription

Tom B

So after what seems like a long time of sharing pictures about this podcast finally this thing that you've been seeing on social media for ages is actually happening. This is episode one of unpaved we're finally here. Katherine what is Unpaved?

Katherine

Unpaved is... unpaved is... unpaved is... I think unpaved is our way of taking you on a bike ride with us, yeah, and a real good excuse to chat to some really interesting people in the sort of off road gravel adventure cycling bike packing world. We want to make sure that with each episode there's a really cool route that we've created with those local hosts so that you can pick it up and you can go and ride it. So they're all going to be available on our komoot account if you're not familiar with komoot it's a route planning a navigation app that really puts experience at the forefront so you can use it to plan for mountain biking gravel riding or road and there's different algorithms that help you. So it's really really handy for that.

So today's ride is from the Wood Cyclery which is an adventure cycling shop right at the heart of the New Forest and as we arrived we found about 50 people milling about about half of them inside and a half spilling out onto the pavement, all eating sticky cinnamon buns and drinking coffee so we'd better get on in there!

Tom Farrell is one of the co-owners of the Woods Cyclery and he organizes free

weekly gravel rides from the shop here in Lyndhurst right at the heart of the

New Forest.

Tom F

It's gone nuts! We used to regularly get the last three rides we've done with 37

people turned up to one the next one was about 25 people and that looks like good

turnout today despite the crap weather.

Katherine

This is Will Meyer, co-founder of Brother Cycles with his brother James. They've run a mini off-road cycling festival called Brother in the Wild and a New Forest for the last few years and this year is going to be in nearby Purbeck.

So we wanted to visit Tom and Will because in this first episode we really want to explore how we got to where we are now, whether this sort of gravel, bike packing , adventure cycling stuff is all new or what it's evolved from and I think these guys are really well placed to help us understand that. And also we've got 50 riders here today how have they achieved that and what's led to that so that's really what we're going to be exploring in today's podcast.

Tom F

We're gonna go over the road up to Pikes Hill and then as soon as we can get onto some gravel we're going to do a nice big climb up to the war memorial, do a big loop around to Milkham enclosure back around it's about 23 miles a little bit of climbing probably 15 to 20 punctures I would imagine, we'll see how it goes. I really love this squeaky brakes at the start of the morning, it's like the clowns are going through town!

Ceci

I'm Ceci, we were down in the New Forest for a bit of an adventure this weekend anyway and just thought we'd come and see some other like-minded people. And see what the New Forest has to offer. It was nice cos it's super flat. Like where we're from it's pretty hilly there's nice off-road but it's really hilly so I'm actually yeah it was amazing to actually cruise on real gravel opposed to just mud and it's pretty

empty it's pretty deserted and there's nice horses to look at so yeah we were walking to dinner it last night and those just the horse walking down the pavement! It's amazing! I love that every house has to have a cattle grid, just to keep the horses out - it's great so far!

Phil

This is like mountain biking in the early 90s all over again which is reinventing my early twenties which is great for someone who's approaching their 50th birthday!

Katherine

 There's obviously a massive appetite for this kind of riding and I think this time of year as well they're blessed with these sort of golden stony rocky double tracks which is kind of like riding our mountain bike trail centre where you know it's gonna be made like a really good and well-maintained surface where it's not just slop - which I think is a good way of describing conditions in a lot of other parts of the UK at the moment. So you can go for a really good gravel ride without looking like you just sort of waded through a

bog and okay they're not endless but they do go on for a long time which is fairly - I wouldn't say unique - but it's unusual especially for this part of the country. If you head to Mid Wales and Scotland you'll find a lot of it along in the North but in terms of the South of England it's pretty pretty special - and we're just passing a pony as well! Which is super nice they get all the wild or semi wild New Forest ponies around here lots of donkeys and free-roaming cattle.

Tom B

This is really different. It's nice, I just immediately felt like I'm on holiday, you know you're in here you're miles away from cars, you're in the woods it's calm, it's beautiful.

Taylor

I started riding, like road touring in southwestern Ontario on vintage bikes and then I moved to the UK and with still riding the road and then I went back to Canada first summer right called the Colt which is the central Ontario loop trail - COLT - it's a 400 kilometre off-road group in Ontario, it's like the roughest thing I

had ever ridden in my life and that was probably the first time it ever rode something that had just brakes I know that Velo Orange Polyvalent from a friend's local bike shop, sort of to test out, it wasn't mine it was the first time I had ever risen like they're like 2.25 inch tires and I needed them! It was like sand and puddles and stuff I had never ridden in my entire life, I loved it!

And then probably the next thing I did was Brother in the Wild Bordeaux, that was probably the next time I rode something like they even resembled mountain biking a little bit and then I was like I never want to ride on the road again!

Tom B

So yeah the guys that run that, they started that off around here! You started Brother in the Wild, here what was your kind of affinity to the place, did you know it really well or?

Will

No not really you see, as was the case like we just launched a new product which is the Kepler at the time which is like a kind of gravel touring steel frame bike and that was that's my own interest and it was all growing and I literally was just looking at places near London - I lived in London at the time- of like where can I go and just like ride some gravel in one day and get on a train there and back and I saw the New Forest, I came down and I had a day of riding here and I actually ended up booking it's like a little bed-and-breakfast. I was just blown away by how amazing the riding was, how wild it felt how close it was to London and that's why I was like we have to organise an event, we have to show people this! So we were like, let's organize a free event and a hire farmer's field and people can just turn up in camp and ride and yeah that's how it all started!

Tom B

It also seems like you encapsulated a feeling of lots of people that were getting into it but didn't necessarily have like a thing that they could all do together that wasn't an event because traditionally it's been not underground but like a very small culture that's grown.

Katherine

I think finding other people from all over the country and beyond that are on the same wavelength as you are, it's amazing and it's just facilitating that people coming together yeah and like when we were first starting out I always had friends messaging me being like, let's organize a trip or like and can we come on one of your next trips like what what have you - everyone was so keen to do something. You know people who'd got into cycling through you know it being a good form of transport and then kind of enjoying it, and then group kind of fixed-gear rides and maybe riding to Brighton fixed-gear and all that kind of stuff so yeah it just seemed like a natural.. so I mean the first year we it was actually a farmer's field it was covered in cows a week before we had the event there and it was it was free, we had like some coffee on-site and a bit of food but it was just don't expect much - it's free. You have to sign up but just turn up here's a route, have fun and like it was amazing. We had like over 100 people sign up in like super quick like under a week the whole place filled and it was just a real sign for us at the time, I thought there's like a lot of people who are really kind of into it and what was cool is like a lot of people there we'd met like you say through Pannier events or through fixed-gear things in London but there's also just a big group of people who came completely alone they didn't really know anyone else who wanted to do this kind of cycling but they were just itching to get out on a little adventure and yeah yeah it just seems like that is now just growing and growing.

You know look at this event now we've got like 50 people here! I think everyone has these realizations. Why are we waiting for those guys to speak into the microphone. Well you should come too Brother in the Wild this year, yeah I mean it's it's super chill yeah. The routes are a bit more technical now we're in the Purbecks. The New Forest is so good for riding but it's not limited but like there are certain areas you ride in and once you've done it three years in a row we'd figured it's good to freshen it up a little bit. The venue we've got is great - we had no cover in the New Forest and one year we had like this crazy electrical thunderstorm walls roof and the whole field was like a foot under water within about a minute of it raining and like so we figured we should get somewhere a little bit better setup.

Katherine

And abroad?!

Will: Yeah yeah we've got er - we actually had a few shops - like almost jokingly shops being like 'Brother in the Wild looks so cool, we should do one like over here in Germany or in France' yeah and actually so now we've done last year we have Berlin Munich and Bordeaux.

Katherine

That's incredible, did you get the same reception over there?

Will

Yeah yeah, it's crazy like the German gravel scene its massive, yeah like they've got amazing riding over there and it's so cool to like collaborate the shops that we work with and we meet no whole different kind of crew of clientele but you know like exactly the same thing and riding in the same way.

Katherine

I guess it's really great for those people to see one of the brothers or two of the brothers behind the brand and get to know a bit more about what you're about. There's two flats back that way okay.

Tom F

Well let's hang here for a little bit, the chances are we'll have one about a mile down and then they'll catch us up.

Tom B

So do you tend to lead these rides?

Tom F

I do yeah yeah I love taking photos so I always get the shots and it often shoots me in the foot because I've had moments where I'm trying to take a picture with no hands on the handlebars and nearly gone over - in fact I have gone over before in front of everyone.

Tom B;

And when you've got this many people coming it must be really good for the shop as well? Tom F: it's amazing I mean everyone buys coffee, buns you know people pick up gloves and little bits and I like to think that people will just think of us next time they need a new bike, which it does happen, they come on a ride even if they don't live near us they'll travel to buy their next bike from us because they've got a bit of a social connection with us yeah that's what bike shops need these days. I think bike shops that are

not doing anything social at all are competing with online and that's always gonna be a struggle. Yeah as long as you can serve them coffee, get something to get them in the door.

Katherine

You started at a time where bike shops were really not doing so well or a lot of bike shops are really suffering with competition from online etc what made you set up Woods?

Tom F

Good question - well we we have another bike shop which is a mainly a hire centre so it's a smaller smaller shop it's always been a struggle to sell high level bikes from there because it's seen as a hire centre so there's always been a good business and me and John my business partner they we took over that shop and at the same time the premises were at the Woods came up for rent and we just looked at that and thought that is such a good spot and we just went for it. I think like I was getting into gravel at the same time and I was I knew it was gonna blow up like there was no question about the popularity increasing so yeah we just went for it!

Tom B

Why off-road? It's a good question - I think like roads are getting busier people realize, I think people aspire to ride on the road and be quick and race each other and lots of average cyclists realized like what's the point in racing. Like what is much nicer to just go out a gentle pace and explore I think the whole adventure kind of thing happened at the same time whether it's hiking, camping, it all went hand-in-hand with gravel riding and bikepacking yeah it worked in sequence. Katherine; Do you find people coming in the shop maybe wanting to get into gravel for the first time they come from different routes so you do find most people are road cyclists or mountain bikers?

Tom F

Definitely all different routes and that's I think the best thing about it is it appeals to everyone I come from a BMX background and after destroying my knee I couldn't really ride BMX anymore I started riding track bikes and I just think I kind of like the aesthetic of a ratty track bike coming from BMX, single-speed really simple. So I started doing that to rehab my knee and then go into mountain biking a little bit cuz I used to mountain bike when I was a kid and then got bored of riding track and riding on the road and mountain biking BMX and track all together kind of is gravel isn't it, in a way? And then there's Road riders that are now starting to get into gravel and other ones that were selling really nice fancy expensive bikes to they don't mind spending loads of money they're used to - you know the road market you can spend five grand plus on a bike and so there's there's a whole different scene that's like the steel frame homegrown ex-bmxer ex-track rider that's knocking up a bike in their shed and then there's the high level road rider that's spending a fortune on a nice carbon gravel bike and there's so many different sides to it because there's the racing side you know gravel racers are getting huge now which is cool but it's totally different to their sort of exploring, camping side of it as well . Yeah there's something for everyone

Tom B

Will, I wanted to ask you about this, Tom was just talking about road riders have moved over into the gravel scene oh yeah so with your you release the Kepler yep solid kind of do it all bike there those people love but then more recently you've started bringing out bikes with different tubing and that's yeah.. is that

partly to do with this kind of change in gravel?

Will

Yeah this actually stemmed from a conversation with Tom a couple years back where you know could we have really close to all the shops we work with and they often talk to us a lot about what customers, what they like about our product what they're looking for and like some of the feedback Tom was the same just saying people love to Kepler but they just want to spend a bit more money like they they like gravel riding and they want something a bit lighter they want some better components they want you know it's a nice hydraulic brakes on it and the Kepler's a great frame I've been riding one for years but like it's solid it's do it all so the Meh-teh was kind of take on a slightly higher end kind of slightly more technical you know it's better to being it's like more lightweight it's yeah you know our products are all quite kind of solid and we really we want one bike to be able to perform lots of different functions but yeah yeah we're doing stuff slightly more kind of focussed on the gravel scene at the moment.

Katherine

Listening to what Tom said, there is a huge amount - even within gravel if you want to call it that, Adventure Cycling - there's huge range it's like mountain biking now is everything from downhill to cross-country the trail and everything in between and it's the same with gravel you get people who want to go bikepacking for two months and carry everything on your bike and then there's other people who just want to go like really fast and do some of these gravel enduros or you can be a mountain biker that wants to go slightly longer distance or you can be like a cyclocross racer you want to do something a bit more chilled or you can be a you know a commuter who want to bike they can go on do not mean the gravel thing can kind of like you can come at it from so many different angles.

Tom F

Well it's not really a new thing, you know people have been riding cyclocross bikes on gravel for years and they tend to be quite uncomfortable and race orientated and then this traditional touring most touring rides will end up riding on some kind of off road. Will: Have you seen the Rough Stuff Fellowship Archive book, they were all gravel riders on old steel frame at touring frames, they were brewing up cups of tea at the top of mountain yeah wearing like huge tweed jackets weigh more than bikes do these days, or the ponchos!

Tom F

My mate brought a poncho on one of our bikepacking trips and it was really windy and it literally blew up like a kite, and it probably weighed about two kilos you know!

Will

A lot of people say it's a negative thing of like oh you know people have been doing it for ages that's what's so fun about it now. Isn't it it's like it is something people in doing for ages but these things come in surges, and general outdoors lifestyle seems to be quite big at the moment for whatever reason maybe it's a reaction against people being stuck on their phones the whole time or watching TV the whole time or like I don't know it's a reconnection with nature but it's a good thing after all.

Tom F

Do you know what I think a big part of it is? Into The Wild - have you seen that movie? Yes I honestly think

that movie had a massive influence on everything adventure.

Katherine

I watched it when I was at the University of Reading, which had this beautiful lake, green campus, and we just went out for a midnight picnic, we were like we can't just go to bed after watching that like, I need to change my life we need to go do something outdoors!

Tom F

I think your Brother movie, Beulah that had quite a big influence on me because I don't know something about that movie that just really captured a vibe. Will: well it was it was kind of, it was really laid-back and some weird music trippy like I guess it was like no real aim to the trip, I mean there was a aim to the trip which was to get to Cape Wrath but it was just kind of touring and making food and having a laugh and drinking whiskey yeah... a trip both did was the Elan Valley and Cambrian mountains of Wales. We were up in the Cambrian mountains looking for a bothy which we had on we all had it on GPS Garmin stuff and my Garmin died, yours went weird but like raining and dark in

Tom F

A farm with some scary dogs, asked the strange farmer which way the bothy was.

Will

Oh it was like 10 o'clock at night pitch-black we got to this old farm the lights were on but no one was answering the doors. Tom then walked around the corner into a barn and there were two two dogs sitting watching the TV. Tom F:We heard voices, so crept around the side and it was two - really gnarly looking dogs sat there in the dark, listening to the radio! And then we saw lights - this is the most remote area in the UK I think there's so few people in houses out there and we saw at the top of that in these lights coming down the hill it must have been a good 10 minutes yeah the cars like just going down the dirt

track eventually got to us yeah and he was like 'you've overshot the bothy by like five miles' and he said he said you need to go back out there about two miles and there's some quad bike tracks in the grass... then you got a puncture then I got a puncture yeah you guys rode off it was really windy they didn't hear

me shouting you know, I had a complete blow-out in the dark with my head torch, trying to punch a plug into my tyre. And then when we got there we nearly set fire to the place... I didn't connect my gas canister properly, went to light it and it blew up in my face.

Katherine

I think it'd be really good to go back to the start of and where it was all conceived. You mentioned before that you started out sort of in the fixed-gear scene is that what got you into riding? Will: I mean I've been into riding on and off my whole life when I was a teenager was you know on hardtails building jumps out in the woods - not I ever did any particularly big jumps - but mostly just hanging out with mates on bikes in the woods and then yeah, actually moving to London and basically not being able to get the tube in rush hour cos it was just too claustrophobic and I found it just you know just quite depressing.

So it's bought myself a bike when I was first working in London that just kind of got me back into cycling from a practical point of view. Then my brother and I were living together at the time we've always had loads of harebrained business ideas and we started buying bikes from the market and like doing them up when friends would buy them off us and that's kind of how it happened. Yeah kind of we were doing the classic like old-school road bike conversion to single speed or fixed gear and friend to buy them and and it that eventually led into us vintage bikes became quite expensive so we just started toying with the idea of designing our own bike and manufacturing one. My brother went on a frame building course with Dave Yates and I had to build a frame so we were maybe thinking about him custom building frames and that didn't really, it wasn't quite what we wanted you know so yeah so then you know we our first product was just a classic steel single speed or fixed gear frame which we weren't even gonna brand at the time we were like that's just it was called the classic steel weird thing so at first we were buying vintage steel frames on eBay converting them building up into simple fixed gear bikes and to selling them to mates. Our initial idea was like these are now becoming what we were buying for 50 quid online suddenly we could it was vintage was 300 pounds and because it became cool it became overpriced and it didn't make sense anymore so we were like let's just design and manufacture a classic steel track frame unbranded and then we can use that to build our bikes and we can set up on ebay just as a classic frame. But then all the effort that went through designing this and manufacturing it we were like actually

we've got to put some sort of brand on it, do you know I mean it.

So Brother Cycles we came up with the name of Christmas dinner and the logo as well like about a week after that ‘cos the frames arriving so it was like a really quick turnaround and then yeah and it just kind of, went from there. But you know in the early days it definitely weren't thinking that we're going to start a bike brand we were just trying to produce a more affordable option for you know getting that classic steel - steel can attract -look but without having to buy something vintage which you know might be an absolute rust bucket or overpriced or half the frames that arrived and they were misaligned or damaged or you know.

So when we first put it on the website it was the Brother Cycles classic I think it's called the classic

steel track frame but it was great could everyone would go on Google and be like I want a classic steel track frame… yeah we weren't being clever about it we were actually being really simple and basic but it worked pretty Well.

Katherine

So you started from a very utilitarian sort of flat city, getting people around... how did things evolve from then, were you going in right at the peak of sort of fixed gear fanatic..?

Will

Yeah fixed this gear was, I mean, fixed gear was massive at the time no these I mean Tokyo Fixed Gear was a shop in London the time which was just right in the middle of Soho and it just had a really good community around it and there were these groups I mean they're still they're still around but like the guys from the Fifth Floor were doing these group rides and there was London fixed-gear single-speed the forum it's at the time was kind of booming like they were just so much going on and it's you know it was a way, in a way we lucked out and that we found a really nice kind of like back entrance into the bike industry because you know it's a very hard industry to get into. But that just happened to be doing well and we happen to produce a product at the time and it really just kind of snowballed from there yeah and it was only as our interest developed you know we wanted then to, we wanted to use Reynold steel on the track frame we wanted to make something a bit lighter and a bit a bit more a better product so we started using different steels and I started doing longer rides and touring and doing some bigger tours around Europe and I from Scotland so then we started thinking about maybe doing you know a touring bike which when the Kepler came into it, but a Kepler at the time we didn't know whether it be a touring bike was at the cyclocross bike and then we were like well maybe let's do a kind of touring bike that could be kind of suitable for cyclocross and then that ended up just being a gravel bike basically it was like you know and it was canti brakes so it's kind of had this kind of retro feel to yeah you know again it was just us literally making products that we wanted ourselves ,not necessarily thinking we'd sell lots of them but it was a very much a hobby business.We had full-time jobs at the time but it just as you produce more products now the demand grew we just kind of put the money we made back into making different products or

developing products or expanding the product range.

Katherine

So that all sort of came about, was it around the time of the 2012 Olympics, with people getting much more into cycling as a nation lot of hype around Road Cycling the track team?

Will 

Yeah I think so like you know, London was booming after the Olympics and it seemed like you know we were at that time we were selling most of our stock into London and bike you know little independent bike shops were popping up all over the place and so we definitely were riding that kind of wave which is great. Sadly London's kind of become a bit of a different place now and actually I think independent bike shops are really a few were doing really well but a lot of lot of the shops we work with back then have kind of  shut down or changed or moved on but definitely there was a lots of things aligned you know the fixed gear world, the gravel scene, the Olympics it all just happened as we were doing what we were doing there were just maybe an abnormally high demand for it which allowed us to kind of create a brand without - you know we didn't have any financial backing or we didn't have any you know you know investors or anything like that at the time we were just doing small runs of products and people would buy them and then you just order more of them and anything made you would used to develop new products. So yeah I think it was fortunate it was a good time to try and start a bike brand basically.

Katherine

Where did you see the need to develop the Kepler - a touring bike or something that could do a bit more off-road?

Will

I mean we would as I think I think lots of people who were into cycling at that time in the fixed-gear scene, we were just doing longer and longer rides on our bikes and it was just I think getting to the silly point where you know just yeah just brakeless yeah just kind of like with huge backpacks on courier bags that weighed about a ton before you even had anything in them and it was I really enjoyed all that but it just got to a point of being like that's it was literally us. It was kind of the first kepler we did we we wanted to do something which had a bit of a 90s mountain bike feel and so we did the kind of crazy fade on it and it was canti brakes you know made basically for Canti brakes - I reckon it would have been 2014 maybe something like that maybe 15 14 15 so it's quite kind of yeah, it was kind of it was it wasn't a gravel bike it was a kind of it was like a I mean it started off as a cyclocross bike and then actually I was doing a lot of bike touring at the time - So we were like let's give it a slightly slacker geometry so you can fit some you can load it up and do a tour on it but it had the kind of clearances for a slightly nobblier cyclo-cross tire so in a way that is if you think about what gravel cycling is it's a like a touring cyclocross bike in a way isn't it so it that was it we started doing gravel bikes, not because we wanted a gravel bike because we we wanted to do long distance loaded off-road rides which is what gravel cycling is I suppose! But it just came but it just came about from designing a product for what we wanted to do rather than to try and get into a niche.

Katherine

Was that the Kepler that you'd took to do Beulah?

Will

After the Kepler I then got this obsession over doing the Tour Divide and so we were thinking about what kind of you know could you do tour dividing the Kepler and I was like, no not really and actually the idea of the Big Bro came about what is it's I mean I it's like the Big Bro is a mountain bike it's a kind of 29er mountain bike but it's still very much gravel orientated you know it's a I mean it's a bike which is designed to do things like the Tour Divide so more technical trails you know a bit of single track but still still loaded up with all your kit on it and you're still you know very much, you know these long-distance endurance kind of self supported races like the Tour Divide or you know even like Tuscany Trail or all these kind of things. 

Katherine

So for anyone who wouldn't know how would you describe the Tour Divide as something that you've ridden yourself?

Will

So the Tour Divide is like an ultra long distance self supported bike packing I wouldn't even say race - challenge which goes from Canada down to the Mexican border so basically north to south across the whole of the USA and it's one of the really early kind of original bikepacking races there are quite a few around now but I think Tour Divide was one of their kind of in it in a time when gravel racing and this endurance off-road racing was a much smaller thing Tour Divide with this funny race where the website was out of dates and it basically you meet on the second Friday in June in Banff Canada and you just you turn up. You send a email of intent, let them know you're doing it but there's no entry fee there's no there's no finish line it's just a kind of you know and it's much bigger now and it's a but it's still got that that kind of feel about it of being quite kind of unregulated.

Katherine

So as one of the sort of founding gravel, rough-road long-distance events you think that's had much of an impact the Tour Divide on this sort of gravel off-road adventure scene as we see it today?

Will

I think so I think it definitely has its I mean it's still seen as being one of the ultimate challenges when it comes to that kind of cycling and I think documentaries and even just stories or reviews or photo sets of people doing it have been a huge influence on what people are now wanting to do on their bikes. For me personally was a massive influence I watched the documentary dozens and dozens and dozens of times, I enjoy every single time and there's something - I think there's something if you get a bug about wanting to do it and it's very hard to shake that. At the start line I was meeting guys there who it was a sixth, seventh, eighth attempt of doing it and sometimes you may not be fit enough sometimes you have a mechanical problem or you get an injury you have a crash you have bad weather there's so many things - it's over 2,000 miles long there's so many things that can happen during that distance that you know you just turn up and give it a crack.

Katherine

And I guess the landscape and variety of terrain is incredibly demanding, not only on the body but on your bike being able to maintain yourself and your equipment for that long?

Will

Yeah and it's maintaining yourself and your bike through every kind of weather condition you can imagine, there's snow, there's tons of rain, there's mud and then there's ultra dry desert sand and you know extreme heat and you have everything down the whole route you know and you could do the the first half in the second half can be more different you know you've got you know snow-capped mountains up and Canada and you've got deserts and New Mexico. I think that's the appeal of it - it's a thing that I find so like - there's just so many parts of it I want to see your experience and I think that's part of the draw to it

Katherine

So how did the Tour Divide it for you?

Will

Tour Divide... it it's actually quite a funny one but I've spent four years thinking about an answering the question I mean ultimately it went about as badly as it could possibly go Two days in got an eye infection at so I'm not gonna remember all the place names but on one of the main camp spots at the end of day two this is about 260 miles in 250 miles in you'd camp out at like a woodland cabin up way up this is quite a remote part of the Canadian mountains at this point the following day you drop down and actually cross into Montana and I'd had a really dry eye and I my friend who are cycling with put some eye drops in at about 3:00 in the morning but neither of us had had a shower or washed our hands for about two days. When I woke up in the morning my eyeball - I basically had pinkeye - my eye was red and swollen and I've also got really bad eyesight in one of my eyes so it was my good eye so yeah but my good eye that had it so I've only got my bad eye then to ride ,so we then had a 90 mile day off-road well basically just following the black line of my friend's tire just to make it into Montana.

So I had a series of like - I had to go I went to like Medical Center and then at go see an eye specialist and actually it's amazing the people you meet on these trails are usually the part of the highlights of it and I went you know in America like medical care notoriously expensive. I went to go see a proper eye specialist, private, who I saw and had two consultations he gave me all sorts of prescriptions and essentially he sorted my eye out I had to have steroid drops in it to like get the infection down. But he we were to every time he went in we were like in our bibs covered in mud like you know like our bikes outside and he didn't charge me a penny for the whole thing because he was you know so impressed by what we're trying to do. Anyway had the eye infection my eye cleared up we then hit the road again and then about three days later we were just pushing it quite hard at that point I make up time, then I've got a knee which gets a bit dodgy and my knee went, and then walked about 130 kilometers. Basically it was a really hilly section so you up hills are so steep that walking them was not even much slower than riding them and then I would roll the downhills so I had about two and a half days of walking pushing my bike rolling the down hills and then I thought my knee had got a bit better I rode for another half day and then it just... so I had to scratch after. So I did about 800 miles but it's a funny one because at the time I was devastated I was so even for about six months after I wasn't a real funk from I was so wanting to do it and then actually if I look back in it's like I got to ride like 800 miles of the Canadian Rockies and Montana and that is such amazing riding so I think this is what put me off the competitive racing element of it now as I think it's good to test yourself but it completely skewed my perception on what was you know I couldn't enjoy having done all that because I felt like I needed to ride the full thing to accomplish it. You know I mean, it was a it's a funny one so it was it was I was one of the best things I've ever done and it's totally

formed me as I am now on my interest in cycling and the way I approach cycling but it wasn't an easy process to go through and it's taken quite a long time to kind of think positively about it but oh yeah that's

what happened on my Tour Divide.

Katherine

So the Tour Divide is quite widely regarded as one of the pinnacles of off-road riding in the world, but what sort of advice would you give to somebody who's perhaps a road cyclist or a mountain biker or not a cyclist at all who's looking at getting into road or off-road riding for the first time?

Will

I guess I would - my initial reaction was going to say like don't pick such a huge challenge to do. First thing like I hadn't done any competitive gravel racing or endurance cycling so it's like I chose as I asked the bigger but then in a way I don't know I think I think actually it's quite hard, for some people it's quite hard to motivate yourself to do something you've never done before, you don't suddenly start going out - so actually maybe picking a challenge but maybe a slightly more manageable one but I think it's quite a good thing to do you know. The UK is actually now got a load of really cool gravel events and whether they're challenges like Dirty Reiver or Grinduro or something like that sign up to something and at least it gives you a target to feel that right okay I know that in six months I've got a ride 200k off-road. So it'll force you to start thinking about what kit you might want , how you might how you want your bike set up to be and it will encourage you to get out on rides and yeah I think that's a really positive way of getting into it.

Katherine

So this is one for both of you really, where do you see this kind of riding; adventure cycling, gravel, off-road going in the future and how do you think it'll change? Let's start with Tom.

Tom F

I would like to think that a lot of the guys getting into gravel now are starting to think about

bike packing because it's a natural you know, if they haven't camped before and they're into the sort of faster side of riding they're gonna start riding off-road start seeing all these nice places and start thinking about camping there as well... so yeah gravel into bike packing is a sort of a natural transition I've noticed that with customers in the shop they'll get a bike capable of riding off-road and then they'll wanna camp and load it up and do some longer you know multi-day rides and I see more, like we were talking about earlier, more niches evolving within gravel. So the bikes - there's quite a variety of gravel bikes there's you sort of bog standard common 700c, 42mm tyre sort of basically road geometry gravel bike and then there's some - you know I almost consider some mountain bikes to be gravel bikes like the Big Bro I mean, it depends how you build up yeah.

I mean it's such a loose term but I see these sort of niches within gravel popping up which I think it's a good thing like people that want to race, people that want to ride quickly, people that I just want to explore, people that want a bike pack yeah so it dividing up and whether there's names for those niches within gravel I don't know but yeah I think there's something for everyone every type of cyclist.

Will

I mean I think it's in a pretty good place at the moment as Tom says you know, it's you know it gets people out into cycling more remote areas and it allows people to do a bit of bike packing and bike touring and I in a way I hope it doesn't particularly change a huge amount from how it is at the moment. I think it's a nice kind of niche within cycling. I think a lot of people get a lot from it and yeah I hope it doesn't really change. It seems quite healthy at the moment.

Katherine

Do you find that gravel for some people is a bit of a gateway drug into more technical off-road riding sort of mountain biking have you seen much of that?

Tom F

Absolutely yeah, a lot of road cyclists getting into gravel and then wanting mountain bikes, because they are yeah getting to really technical terrain and struggling a bit with a gravel bike and yeah they they tend to want a mountain bike after that and the types of mountain bikes that we're selling a lot of are steel frame hardtails because they appeal to gravel cyclists a little bit more they're durable and they still ride nicely for big rides but you can take them on more technical terrain, you can load them up bike packing so yeah definitely it's opening a lots of people's eyes to mountain biking and mountain biking has gone so like extreme in you know. Full suspension mountain bike so you can't really have that much fun on one of those on a regular trail you have to be somewhere pretty gnarly, so there's definitely a niche for mountain bikes that you know if a lighter terrain bigger day rides that sort of thing and it tends to be a gravel cyclist moving into that sort of realm.

Will

Could be a gateway drug for the opposite, as well yeah a mountain biker who normally gets a go to a trail centre or gets a lift up, suddenly they're kind of doing slightly longer - I mean I'm this is a total speculation I've never met anyone who's like this - but like maybe they're suddenly doing slightly longer rides but still able to do some more technical stuff and maybe it's better for their fitness traditionally mountain bike and wood there's this sort of rivalry between between road cyclists and mountain bikes but a gravel bike is kind of in between which is a bit more socially acceptable from an aesthetic point of view people love big tires whether it's a road bike with big slicks on it or you know mountain bikes, suddenly drop a bike with massive knobbly…

Will

There is something good-looking about a drop bar big tire bike. It just looks good. Fat bikes went a little too far for most people yeah yeah my brother and I laughed quite a lot because when we started Brother Cycles 10 years ago it was like 'how can we create the tightest possible clearance on a track frame it's like I want like a millimeter, I don't want to see any daylight' now it's like 'how big a clearance can be fit onto a drop-bar bike?' That's like how can you fit um you know we want the biggest tire possible it's a total opposite end of the spectrum.

Katherine

What about a message for people who might want to come down to the New Forest whether they're touring this spring and summer and they wanted to pop into the shop? Like is the is the ride open to all? Can anybody join? What's the best way to get involved?

Tom F

Yeah absolutely the whole idea the ride is to be inclusive for anyone who wants to just turn up. It's free, you don't need a special bike, I mean I wouldn't recommend a road bike with skinny tires because you probably just get lots of punctures but any mountain bike, gravel bike whatever you want to bring. You can come along to drink coffee in the morning chat come for a ride and meet other people.

The pace - people always ask about the pace - because some people are in timid thinking it would be too quick but the pace is really to do with who comes, so if it's a really fast group of riders that will turn up then we'll ride quite quickly but if there's slow guys in the group we will wait at the gate. You know no one cares if the pace is a little bit slower everyone just chats more and you know we tend to get a few punctures here and there which gives everyone a break and time to have a breather so yeah it's really

inclusive, anyone can turn out and you can always send us a message on Instagram and Facebook. We'll also give you good advice on routes if you wanted to just turn up a ride on your own we'll give you a good advice on where to go and we were involved with the Bikepacking.com route that Cass did he came to us in the summer and asked for lots of advice on the route and you know we basically gave him the best of the Forest and he did that so if you want a big ride you can do that. I think it's 62 miles altogether and you could always do a section of it so that's a good GPX file you can download and I think we're soon to improve our website to give a bit more detail on routes so people can just go on the website find a route download a GPX file and go from there. Yeah you're always welcome to pop in the shop drink coffee chat about routes, chat about bikes.

Katherin

 So that's it from episode one of the Unpaved podcast. Make sure you subscribe leave us a review and share this with your friends and then we'll see you next week when we're going to be up in the Dark Peak of the Peak District. Yeah we're going to be focusing on route planning next week don't forget that you can download the route that you've heard today from our komoot profile, yeah you can download the route

from our komoot profile and if you haven't used komoot before and you'd like to give it a go then they've given you the option to have a free region bundle so we'll put the instructions for that in the show notes, it's super easy just have to make an account and enter the voucher code UNPAVED all in capitals.

And another thing to mention whilst we're talking about free stuff is that we've got a giveaway again thanks to komoot our sponsor.

Tom B

So Brother in the Wild which we've talked about a lot in this podcast is coming up in May. It's such a good kind of introduction to gravel riding if you've not done that much before and the whole camping out, and music and good food and talks and all sorts it's really good weekend lovely vibes and if you sign up for newsletter you've got chance getting a pair of tickets for Brother in the Wild so sign up and we'll be announcing the winner of that in the start of March.

And next week we're gonna be giving you a lot more kind of tips on route planning so we've got some of the UK's best route planners coming out on a ride with us you would be able to download that route and hopefully you'll get some kind of good advice that will make your own route planning a little bit better or might just inspire some ideas a places to go speaking of places to go if you have any ideas of good gravel rides or off-road adventures that we can do in the UK or you know anywhere if you want us to come and visit and I've got a good way of getting us there let us know we want to hear what you think we should cover and what to talk about so do get in touch.