ARE E-BIKES MORE F UN?
Can a gravel e-bike take you places that a standard bike can't?
Gravel is now firmly established as a great way to get you riding away from the trauma of tra!c and a means to open up a whole new range of o"-piste route options. But with longer and tougher events being added to the calendar all the time, what if your range is restricted by your fitness or other factors? We met up with Debs Goodall, from Yorkshire True Grit events, for a sneak preview of the 100-mile Five Forests event route taking Whyte’s Fazua motor-powered Gosport and human-powered Gisburn to see how electric and epic compare.
ESC A PE A ND E VAT ION
As we roll out from Spiers House Cafe in Cropton, any worries about e-bikes shattering the peace of the forest are quickly dispelled. Even in ‘Rocket’, the most powerful of its three modes, the Fazua Evation motor of the Gosport is a barely audible whir that’s lost in the crackle of frozen snow patches. It’s aesthetically ‘quiet’, too, totally hidden away in a chunky down tube with only a small remote on the bars as a giveaway. Whyte has fitted the Gosport with chunky, fashionably tan wall WTB rubber on 27.5in wheels to draw attention away from its pregnant frame. With a top tube bag and seatpack fitted it’s a good-looking machine with similar ‘rugged intention’ kerb appeal to an SUV soft roader. It’s not just a cosmetic move either as more air volume in the 47mm tyres helps soften the ride of the big-legged alloy fork and inevitable thump of battery and motor inertia.
Debs is glad of the extra motor assistance as she’s just recovering from a cold. “I wouldn’t have been able to come out today without a bit of electric encouragement and I’m surprised how smooth and subtle the motor is," she says. "I can’t really tell it’s there, apart from the fact that I can see you’re breathing pretty hard and I’m not, which is the opposite way round to normal!”
LIMITING FACTORS
Like all UK e-bikes, the Gosport is legally limited to 16mph/25kph and if I really put the hammer down on the flatter parts of the fire road I can create a gap on the Gisburn. The 400W/6Nm max output of the Fazua also gets buried in your own e"ort if you really dig deep when accelerating or cranking up a steep bank. It doesn’t take long to learn to relax slightly and let the motor catch up and assist, though, and for cruising the level of assistance is spot on. As we roll further north towards the moors, I’m interested to see that Debs is primarily leaving it in the green LED indicated ‘Breeze’ mode. “To be honest, I thought the name was a bit cheesy at first but it’s just enough to add a slight tailwind so it actually makes sense,” she says.
I’m relieved that Debs is happy to just have her e"ort topped up, rather than going full throttle, because it only takes a couple of climbs before my legs are blunted
enough to stop me being able to outrun the Gosport on the flat. Interestingly, when we hit the road sections over the moors into the adjacent forest, the amount of extra e ort required to keep the Gosport going above and beyond its motor is less than the advantage gained by sitting on my wheel. In other words, even when my legs are howling, Debs has still got a grin on her face when I turn around to check.
The limited torque of the motor means it doesn’t suck life out of the battery that quickly either. So while most e-mountain bikes are now using 5-700WH batteries, the Fazua battery is only 252WH, but it still gives 50km+ of range even in cold, wet conditions. At only 1300g it’s the same weight as two standard water bottles, so if you wanted to carry a spare (around £370) it wouldn’t add huge amounts of weight. The real ingenious element of the Fazua is that you can totally remove the whole power pack and battery tube, turning the 16kg e-bike into a 12.5kg self-powered gravel bike. Hardly light, but not cripplingly heavy if you wanted to head out under your own steam. The Fazua system also has its own app, which gives comprehensive ride data and diagnostics, including the wattage you’ve been putting out yourself. The 11-bar battery indicator and up-down switch block on the bars is a bit crude, though, and there’s no locking mechanism on the battery, which is a potential issue.
E GR AV EL V S E ROA D
The short spells on the road that join the forest sections underline another attractive aspect of e-gravel as a concept. A 16mph/25km limit is fine for sightseeing on the road but frustrating if you’re trying to make significant progress, which is why road e-bikes make more sense for riders in hillier areas. As soon as the hum of tarmac is replaced by the splatter and rattle of gravel and singletrack, 25kmh is plenty.
In fact, it would likely be too much if we weren’t riding the Whytes. That’s because the UK brand prides itself on pushing the limits of what any of its bikes can do within their respective categories. The basis of that is progressive geometry with extended front centre (crank to front wheel) measurements and slacker head angles to add stability at speed, particularly in slippery situations. Short stems are then fitted to keep the steering fast enough to be responsive, and super-wide 500mm bars are fitted to give serious leverage when control is crucial. When they first started doing this on gravel bikes the results weren’t always great, as the increased sense of confidence wasn’t backed up by the grip of available tyres. Something we repeatedly found out from the comfort of trail-side bushes. Both the
TH Et UK BRAND PRIDE SIT SELF ON PUSHING THE LIMITS OF WHAT ANY OF ITS BIKES CAN DO WITHIN THEIR RESPECTIVE CATEGORIES. THE BASIS OF THAT IS PROGRESSIVE GEOMETRY WITH EXTENDED FRONT CENTRE MEASUREMENTS AND SLACK ER HEAD ANGLES TO ADD STABILITY AT SPEED, PARTICULARLY IN SLIPPERY SITUATIONS
Gisburn and Gosport now have mini MTB tread on their WTB tyres, though, and even when you do provoke them into a slide they can be held in a predictable drift until you find bite.
That's something we’re making the most of as Debs takes us down some more technical trails. As we hit some rooty, mossy riverside singletrack I’m particularly pleased that Whyte is one of the few brands to have taken advantage of one of the scope-expanding features of Shimano’s new GRX gravel group. The left-hand ‘shifter’ actually pulls the cable of a dropper seatpost, letting me lower my centre of gravity for descents or get it out of the way for jumping or jiving around on more technical trails. The GRX’s big 160mm rotors and broad, ribbed brake hoods give me plenty of control when giddy turns skiddy, scarily close to the water’s edge, too.
GRAVEL OR MT B?
The more technical bits of trail also highlight another advantage adopted from MTBs. Tubeless tyres on wider rims don’t just give better grip, they also let you run significantly lower pressures to soften the ride. We’re not going crazy low today as the temperature is hovering around freezing and we don’t want to be stuck fixing pinch punctures. Even with 40/45psi front/rear in the Gosport and 35/40psi in the Gisburn it’s enough to make the rough stu! more civilised, but having ridden the same tyres at 10psi less I know that’s when the hovercraft e!ect really kicks in. The bit of extra tyre footprint and reassuringly power-assisted steering feel are a definite boost on the regular sections of icy snow left behind from the cold snap of the weekend.
While they look like mini MTB treads the WTB tyres actually roll surprisingly well. They’re probably a gear slower than a properly quick gravel tyre, such as Schwalbe’s benchmark G-One or Continental’s excellent new CrossTrail, but the centre ridge design doesn’t drag too much on hard pack or tarmac sections. They’re certainly faster rolling than an XC MTB tyre, and in terms of weight, even the deliberately stout spec and sturdy alloy chassis of the Gisburn is several kilos lighter than a race hardtail of the same price. The Easton cranks, with their 30mm axle, also mean power isn’t wasted, despite a more cultured ride than you’ll get from a lot of alloy gravel frames. That helps answer the, ‘Wouldn’t I just be better o! with a mountain bike?’ question in e"ciency terms, but there’s also an emotional side to the gravel equation that makes it chime with a lot of people.
While Debs and her partner, Andy, deliberately push the envelope of what people would see as
THE GRX'S BIG ROTORS AND BROAD, RIBBED BRAKE
HOODS GIVE ME PLENTY OF CONTROL WHEN GIDDY TURNS SKIDDY
‘gravel riding’ on parts of their courses, they’d still be relatively tame on a full MTB. That same MTB would leave the rest of the route a deathly dull trudge, while on a gravel bike we’re getting great satisfaction from conquering the challenging sections, but rolling fast enough to have fun on the fire roads. Even though the bars are really wide, the fact that they’re dropped, rather than flat means there’s no shame if we want to stick to forest tracks, but gives us instant kudos if we whoop and holler round the blue-grade MTB routes. With its dropper post and awesome handling I’ve hit red-grade routes surprisingly fast on the Gisburn, so while it’s not the fastest or lightest of gravel bikes it genuinely stretches what’s safe and sensible. Two bottle cages on the Gisburn (one on Gosport) plus rack and full mudguard mounts mean that both bikes are also practical for commuting and/or touring, with fully sealed internal cable routing keeping UK conditions at bay, day after dirty day.
IS THE FUTURE ELECTRIC?
While I’ve been riding e-bikes of all varieties for a while and take a broadly welcoming ‘anything that gets more people pedalling with or without a motor is a good thing’ view, it’s been interesting watching Debs ride the Gosport and getting her feedback. “Even though you’ve loaded me up with the extra bags, it’s not me who’s been blowing on the hills as there’s enough assist when I need it but it was never intrusive. It’s quiet, there’s no drag when we’re going faster on descents than it can help with and it still handles really well. Even the couple of times the tyres couldn’t cope and I had to push it wasn’t as heavy as expected. We’ve always allowed e-bikes on our events but it’s nearly always been e-MTBs so far. I can really see bikes like this becoming popular, though, and if that’s the di erence between someone signing up for an event or choosing the longer route option then that’s great. We see a lot of mixed-ability groups riding our events, so being able to equalise fitness levels would really help. The fact that you can even use it as a normal pedal bike is really clever, too, especially if it’s a couple sharing the same bike for di erent rides.”
GR AV EL CLUB
The fact that Debs has been able to come out and show us some of the excellent riding lined up for her latest event, when otherwise she was planning a duvet day has certainly proved the usefulness of the Gosport. The amount of fun I’ve had charging the technical bits and chasing the Fazua up the climbs on the Gisburn proves that progressive gravel bikes are an absolute hoot on trails that would be tame or tiresome on an MTB.
Either way, as we hose the Whytes down and warm up with tea and co ee at Spiers House we’ve both earned the huge club sandwiches they deliver on a day when Debs wouldn’t have ridden and I wouldn’t have found such a lot of great new riding.