The 'Award Winning' Valravn was born out of the desire for a bike that I could do road intensity fitness rides on, but that I didn't have to ride on the roads. Turns out "Gravel Biking" was already a thing.

  And so I present my take on the Gravel/AllRoad/MonsterCross bike. I started off with a Body geometry fit bike and adjusted it to my ideal peddling position as you would for a custom fit road bike, but that is where the tarmac influence ends. From the outset I had a dropper post in mind which meant that this bike had to handle whilst standing and on the drops so a 40mm stem was the only way to go which isn't quite as extreme as you might think when paired with a drop bar that has an additional 70mm of reach so in MTB terms this is old fashioned with a 110mm equivalent stem whilst resting on the pods, but move your grip down and back on the the drops and the true handling benefits become apparent.

  To make a 40mm stem work though the 60-100mm that has been removed has to go somewhere and that went into the top tube. With the slackend head angle and 45mm offset fork this gave a stable trail number of 108mm, which my seem huge when compared to classic road bikes but the steering is just as light and responsive due to the short stem.

  Next up was tyre clearance, 700C-40C or 650B-2.1 seemed to be a thing, but I would always favor the bigger wheel, especially for long days on rough ground where the increased roll over and comfort of a larger tyre combined will outperform all other opitons.

Comfort is high on the agenda also and for this I chose 16mm seat stays and Columbus chain stays to allow for more compliance when compared to the stiff over-sized Reynolds 853 front triangle which helps keep the directional handling pin sharp. 

 A frame is nothing without a decent set of wheels to roll on and so I consider it to be a complete package. extensive testing on my mountain bikes  and over 10 years of building my own race wheels has taught me a thing or two about what makes a wheel go round. 32 spoke 3 cross is still king and paired with carbon rims for larger wheels makes for the near perfect combination of vertical compliance whilst maintaining directional stability, with the 3 cross pattern allowing for low spoke tension whilst still resisting braking and drive forces well. 

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So is this just a mountain bike with drop bars then?

No this is a ground up project which combines aspects of both disciplines and it will allow you to hang with the Peloton, tackle a light XC course and then mash round a CX circuit on the same bike.