The rider’s ride

Swift Ultravox SSL, frameset £1,599, swiftcarbon.com

The Ultravox has been around in this guise for a few years now, so it isn’t part of the wide-tyred, disc-braked, internal-cabled zeitgeist, but it still excels on the smooth roads and massive climbs of the Hautes-pyrenees, where I live. Those beefy tubes pay dividends in handling precision and power transfer, which is important if, like me, you’re very fussy about such things.

The carbon-spoked Mavic R-sys SLR wheels are brilliant in the mountains – they weigh less than 1,300g as clinchers yet are stiff and brilliantly responsive. Also those black rims are alloy, not carbon, which means descending in the wet isn’t quite as hairraising as it might be.

Built as it is – with an Enve bar, stem and seatpost, S-works Power saddle, Rotor 2Inpower crankset with 50/34 Q-rings and a pensionable Shimano Dura-ace 9000 groupset – the bike weighs in at 6.9kg.