‘There’s nothing new under the sun’ is a phrase that could have been applied to riding a bike for much of the past 100 years. Double diamond frame, pneumatic tyres, cycling clubs, close-fit clothing and you’re well away.
The advent of the gravel niche in the last 10 years feels like a rare shake-up, though perhaps not quite as significant as the arrival of mountain biking before it in the mid-late 1980s. Not so remarkable in itself but, if you look into gravel’s mud-flecked recesses, you will find a myth cracked open: cycling costs a fortune.
New and expensive kit is what we see the most – the stuff that brands with big marketing budgets are trying to sell us. It pops up in the algorithm and appears in magazines looking shiny and new and desirable. But dig deeper and the truth becomes clearer.
Gravel, and its sibling bikepacking, celebrates everyone – whatever they choose to ride. From inexpensive mountain bikes to brand new carbon machines with electronic gears, everybody’s welcome. Equally, how you dress is not really anyone else’s concern, and if you started quoting Velominati rules about only wearing your shades inside your helmet straps, they’d probably think you were in need of a quiet sit down and a cup of tea.
James Shrubsall
Having been at Cycling Weekly for over two decades, and cycling a little bit longer, James is in a good position to tell you what’s good and what isn’t in the world of bike riding.
The moral of the story is this: you don’t need fancy kit and a massive bank balance to get a huge amount from riding a bike. Unfortunately, if gravel isn’t your thing, or you’ve never heard of it (highly likely if you’re new to bike riding), this is far from obvious.
If all you have to go on are the paid-for posts that smack you in the chops via Instagram with tiresome frequency, or cycling influencers pushing the top-of-the-line bikes and clothing via affiliate links, you might imagine that unless you spend five grand and more, you will remain simply ‘someone who rides a bike’, as opposed to the dream – a real and proper cyclist. Cycling seems to have convinced itself that if you’re not spending, say, £150 on your shorts, or two months’ wages on your bike, they’re probably not worth having.
Thankfully for our collective bank balances, this just isn’t true.
If you want to ride events or races on a regular basis then the costs do ramp up fast. Unfortunately, with insurance, levees and chip time rental, it’s very difficult to put on a fully-featured event or race at a bare-bones price. There are still some brilliant, affordable events, though – time trials and Audax, for example and maybe some grass-roots charity rides. Some bikepacking events are even free to enter.
Beyond races and events, though, cycling remains a reasonably accessible pastime financially. A quick glance through the classifieds reveals plenty of very serviceable rim brake road bikes from £150 upwards, and good quality disc brake road bikes from £400. Someone brand new to cycling might need to enlist a friend to help pick a bike out and maybe even do a little fettling. But any of these would stand up on group ride – even a fast one.
Equally, clothing can be found at favourable prices on the sites like Vinted or eBay and in the sales. While it’s worth going for a quality pair of shorts, they don’t need to cost three figures to keep you comfortable. You might not have the flashiest labels on the group ride, but there’s no reason you can’t still look good with a clean bike and a bit of colour matching.
For better or worse, this is the way I’ve always approached my kit (though generally minus the colour matching and often the clean bike too). My earliest years on the bike, schooled by my local CTC District Association, instilled in me the idea that the group ride is about riding the bike, enjoying the journey and the company, and not a faux fashion parade.
This does mean that on occasions over the years, I’ve had the distinct feeling that my ride mates are giving me the side-eye and wondering whether I dressed in the dark. But on the plus side, I’ve never been gaslit into believing that only the really fancy, expensive stuff is worth having. It can be lovely to own, of course, and as a cycling journalist I’ve been lucky enough to try out plenty of stuff I would struggle to justify buying out of my own pocket – and it has generally been very good.
It’s worth remembering, though, that you can often get 95% of the way there – sometimes all the way – with the cheaper stuff. In these straitened times, I’d recommend trying it to anyone.
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