The Pedaler

The message arrived while I was closing my laptop, just as the shadows were settling in for the night. “How do you feel about early mornings?” How did I feel about early mornings? Generally fine, as long as I’m wrapped up in a duvet, slumbering when they happen.

“Carbon can feel like a one-way conversation, but steel wants to be playful; it encourages you to push on,” says Robert Quirk, waxing lyrical about his frame material of choice at Quirk cycles while phoning in on the eve of his flight to ride the Silk Road Mountain Race in a pair of Quoc Gran Tourer Gravel Bike Shoes

Where touring meets mountain biking, you’ll find bikepacking - that new-but-not-really blend of camping, cycling and good times adventuring. With its roots firmly planted in turned-up trousers meandering, the bikepacking boom has swept up bike makers and rubber merchants alike.

I quit wearing road cycling shoes about a year ago. I destroyed every single pair I ever owned within a few months. In case you’re wondering, I wasn’t wrecking them on purpose. And the spontaneous gravel stretches that I often toss into my rides didn’t do the damage, either. The blame lays with the lens.

With the right mindset, a reliable bike and some well-chosen accessories, cycling in the city is one of life’s most satisfying pastimes. Taking the tube has its merits, as does jumping on the bus, but there’s nothing quite like speeding past stuck traffic on your bicycle, feeling the city move around you like a changeling thing.

Milano, 1908. Sports daily La Gazzetta dello Sport is in dire financial straits. The boss is looking for ideas and quick. Enter one Armando Cougnet, he who, in 1898 aged 18, cycled from Reggio Emilia to Milano to take up a position with the pink-papered publication. Armando had twice followed the Tour de France in his role and witnessed how effective a marketing tool it had proved to be for the Parisian newspaper L’Auto.

Rob English made his name at the 2013 NAHBS, winning the coveted  Best in Show award for the second version of his ‘extreme’ state-winning Time Trial Mk2 bike (the saddle to bar drop measurement is big, to say the least). Best Campagnolo Bike and Best Road Bike soon followed, and a deserved reputation for perfectionism was born.

Having first coined the phrase 'Allroad' back in 2007 to describe the bikes he and his Bicycle Quarterly Team were building for themselves, this softly spoken German has become the de-facto doyen of gravel cycling, reasserting lost truths in an effort to recover the spirit of the first randonneurs.