The Pedaler

“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

Bringing a handlebar bag to a carbon-tubed road ride in England is a spicy move. But without a fleet of downtrodden domestiques to shoulder your extra gear, kit-stowing alternatives are thin on the ground when it comes to long days in the saddle. That's where road bike handlebar bags come in.

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.

It was on day four that things fell apart for Sean Conway; what this endurance adventurer calls a hiccup on his refreshingly candid website. Averaging 200 miles a day, a leg problem forced the 37-year-old Zimbabwean to pull up on the side of the road, and out of his attempt to be the fastest individual to ride across Europe.