Where the Gravel Bike Goes: Passes, Tracks and the Dark

The gravel bike is a Scott Addict Gravel RC, a carbon gravel bike on 45 mm tyres and wide wheels. It is the bike for everything past the tarmac: mountain passes, forest tracks, village roads and gravel that has no name. This post is about those rides, because a logo on this bike goes where no billboard has ever stood.

Past the city limits

The road bike’s world ends where the tarmac ends. The gravel bike’s begins there. A forest track, a farm road, the gravel over a pass, a path along a river: these are places with no advertising of any kind. A logo on a bike riding them is not competing with a hundred other messages. It is the only one.

On the pass

A mountain pass is a long, slow climb and a long descent, usually on a road shared with a few cars, some motorcycles and other cyclists. At the top there is a sign, a view and often a cafe, and every bike that arrives is looked at by everyone already there. On the way up the bike is passed slowly by every vehicle on the road. On the way down the rims and the down tube are what a following car sees, exactly as on the road bike.

On the track

Forest tracks and gravel roads are shared with walkers, other riders and the occasional vehicle. Speeds are lower, which means more time for anyone passing to look. The gravel bike’s longer chain stay and fork cargo mount are exposed surfaces here, which is why they are zones on this bike and not on the road bike. Mud and dust are part of the deal; a bold, simple mark survives them better than a detailed one, as preparing your logo explains.

In the villages

Between the passes and the tracks are villages with one cafe and one square. A bike leaning outside that cafe is seen by everyone who walks past, and in a village that is most of the people who live there. These are places where an advert of any kind is rare enough to be noticed, and a bike with a wrap on it is noticed first.

After dark

The film on the gravel board is a night ride hours from any city, lit by nothing but the bike’s own lamp: the headlight beam on empty tarmac and guardrails, and nothing else. It was shot from the handlebar on a real ride, with the sound removed and no edit. Out there, in the dark, a logo on the frame is the only advert on the road, and it is moving.

The surfaces that face the hills

The same main zones exist on both bikes: down tube, top tube, seat tube, head tube, stays, fork, rims, bar, stem, saddle, seatpost, crank and bottle. The gravel bike adds the fork cargo mount and prices its wider rims and longer chain stay on their own area and exposure. Choosing a zone walks each surface; on the gravel bike the rims are a larger surface than on the road bike, and the cargo mount is a zone only this bike can offer.

Who sees it

Fewer people than the city, and brandmybicycle does not pretend otherwise. What the gravel bike offers instead is attention without competition: riders and walkers who look at bikes, villages where an advert is an event, and the top of a pass where everyone looks at everything that arrives. For a brand whose customers are outdoors, that is the audience, and there is no other way to reach them on the road.

Loaded and unloaded

A gravel bike with a cargo mount is sometimes ridden loaded, with a bag on the fork, and sometimes bare. Loaded, it goes further from the road and stays out longer; bare, it is faster and rides the same passes as the road bike, on the gravel side of them. The fork cargo mount zone sits beside whatever is mounted there, and it is seen most on the long, loaded days.

What the gravel bike is not

It is not a mountain bike with suspension on a trail centre, and the page does not pretend it is. It is a fast gravel bike that rides the roads past the end of the tarmac. Its visibility is lower in count and higher in attention than the road bike’s, and brandmybicycle states that plainly rather than quoting a number for either.

The same bike every time

The gravel board is one bike. It is not a fleet and it is not a rider club; it is a Scott Addict Gravel RC in size M, the one on the page, ridden on the roads described here. Everything on this page about where it goes is about that bike, and the board that sells its zones closes forever when its goal fills.

The road bike is the other half

The road bike rides the cities, commutes and descents the gravel bike leaves behind. The two are separate boards with separate goals and separate refunds; our post on where the road bike goes describes its days, and two bikes, two boards is about taking one or both.