Some photos of our steel gravel bike Alterego in a urbex scenario.
What’s the match between urbex and gravel? In fact, nothing. A gravel bike is usually associated with nature, open landscapes, a feeling of freedom.
But getting inside abandoned places is something not common and not for everyone. It gives a feeling of freedom too because it somehow breaks the rules. Breaking into closed-off spaces isn’t an explicitly political act – there is no attempt to change anything specific – but in an over-regulated, over-securitised world, it feels like a way of kicking against the system.
And here we have the common point between urbex and gravel: breaking the rules.
Riding (a sort of) road bike on a gravel path is not what the pure cyclist would have even thought some decades ago.
This steel gravel bike has been equipped with a Sram Rival 1X. The frame has a classic look because of lugs junctions. Lugged frames do make the frame about 1/4 of a pound heavier than TIG. However that extra weight does serve to reinforce the frame better than a weld bead, plus it takes less heat to braze a lugged frame then it does to weld thus the tubing has far less heat stress on it.
What is so stylish on this bike are the gradients of brown tyres, saddle and bar tape. Tyres are the Vredestein Aventura 700×42, specifically designed for fast gravel roads. The saddle is a Selle Italia Novus Evo specific for gravel. The brown bar tape is MvTek and matches the saddle perfectly.
