There’s no such thing as gravel.

Or, rather, there’s no such thing as a single conception of what ‘gravel’ is. It exists on a kind of shifting scale, defined by where you live, what your appetite for adventure is, and the capabilities of your bike and the tyres it runs. What you call ‘gravel’ might be another person’s ‘singletrack’. Another person’s ‘gravel’ might be your ‘road cycling’. We each know what gravel is when we see it – but the problem is that we also each see it through a different lens.

When talking gear for gravel, it’s easy to run into similar deficiencies in definition. Is a gravel-appropriate tyre a 700×28 slick? A 700×35 semi-slick? A 650×47 knobbly?

And what about bikes – are your horizons opened up enough by a big-clearance road bike? If so, how big is that clearance, exactly? Are disc brakes mandatory? What does the geometry look like? Are the wheels 700c or 650b? Can the frame fit both? Is it suspended or rigid? Do you need an all-road bike, a gravel bike, an adventure bike … and what – if anything – is the difference between them?

In this confusing flurry of questions, perhaps the most pressing one is this: can we arrive at a common vocabulary to define what this ‘gravel’ thing is?

Tyres mentioned:
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CyclingTips full article:
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