• If you're more of a "jesus take the wheel" type person maybe you'd prefer less input and you can be chauffeur driven on your slack gravé bike around the Richmond Park "gravel" path.

    I don't know if you mean this to sound incredibly snotty, but that's how it sounds.

    I'm not a racer - I don't have the physique or to be honest the inclination. But I can happily spend all day in the saddle and put decent miles in, and my idea of fun is strapping a saddle bag and a frame bag on, picking a destination and then finding my way there and stopping wherever looks interesting and reachable by evening along the way.

    My previous bike was a Fratello, which takes up to 28mm tyres but still has a more relaxed, audax/endurance oriented geometry. I did LEJOG on it and attempted LEL on it (I had to drop out as I had undiagnosed asthma that kicked in just outside Scotland). I rode that bike for years and loved riding it, but I wanted to get something with disc brakes and space for fatter tyres. After literally years of indecision, Condor released the through-axle version of the Bivio Gravel, which feels very similar in geometry to the Fratello but with all the additional things that I wanted. So I ordered one and gave them all the parts I'd been hoarding for my eventual build. I got it at the beginning of lockdown, and so far I've been loving it, and can't wait to take it out on a proper adventure.

  • Some people get on with that kind of geo and that's fine, others (myself included) can find it like driving a boat. There are guidelines such as bikes for rougher terrain having slower handling so they don't twitch every time you hit a rock but there's room for adjustment to how you prefer it.

    PhilDAS is right in that a CX bike will generally be more similar to a road bike geo than a gravel bike because CX bikes are for racing and need quick handling, I generally agree with his opinion that they make more sense for mostly road-some off road bikes but they can lack some stuff like mounts for bottles, mudguards etc and the higher BB will make them feel less stable for cornering and descending. Also some do struggle to take tyres fatter than 33 or 35.

    As an aside I quite like the look of the Bivio with thru-axels. My main complaint with Condor bikes is usually price.

  • But you're defining road bike as race bike, here. My Fratello was a road bike with endurance geometry. A Dawes Galaxy is a road bike with touring geometry. I wanted a road/gravel bike with endurance geometry - if I wanted racing geometry, maybe I'd have bought a CX bike.

    Edit to add - the Fratello has 52mm of trail; the Bivio has 55mm of trail. Neither of those feels particularly slouchy, but they're not as aggressive as some bikes.

  • PhilDAS is right...

    Is he though.

    ...in that a CX bike will generally be more similar to a road bike geo than a gravel bike.

    Citation needed

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