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What I was looking for in geometry was:
- clearance for bigish tyres, close to current bike which can take 40mm
- mounts for mudguards
- relaxed / stable frame, so low BB (as close to 80 as possible, but not less than 75mm BB drop, slack-ish seat angle (none are very slack, there's nothing less than 73 and most are 73.5-74.5) and long-ish wheel base (arbitrarily I wanted > 1m).
- high stack / long head tube. Current bike has a good few spacers under the stem - would like not to need so many, so stack > 550-580. Stack to reach ratio >1.45.
I don't know if my criteria will actually give me a bike that I'll enjoy riding, but I can't blame anyone else if it doesn't - and I'll know to get something different next time!
I wasn't looking for something racy that I'd use on a crit or even a summer sportive, more a bike that won't be too much effort when I'm plodding along at 15km/h in the dark when it's pissing rain after I've been riding for a week.
The Stigmata wasn't bad, just a little racier than I was after. I'd need the smallest size (52 - I had a preference for bikes where I don't need their smallest size - probably a bit irrational but I think things get a bit distorted at the extremes!) so that the reach wasn't too long. The BB drop is good (74mm), HT long for a small bike (130) but the seat tube is a bit steep at 74.5. That was probably what ruled it out for me.
I had another near miss when I started to look at the Chinese frames. The Yoeleo G21, which looks really good on some aspects, eg has lowest BB apart from Domane and Diverge, but is just a few mm too long for me. When I drop down a size to fix that, the seat angle gets steep (75) and the head tube short (90), so no good.
Other than tyre clearance I didn't find there was much difference between bikes positioned as road vs gravel - which won't be surprising to anyone sceptical about gravel being a marketing concept, etc.
- clearance for bigish tyres, close to current bike which can take 40mm
I'm not suggesting to get an ill fitting bike !
What i found personnally is that longer geo and slacker forks get a bit frustrating on road and especially climbs. I would try to stick with the most agressive of gravel frames. Along the lines of some of the mentionned frames like santa cruz stigmata.