A gravel road bike is still a road bike. It's a road bike that has been designed to work well on rougher surfaces… but it's still a road bike.
The recipe pushed by many manufacturers for a gravel bike is now clear: frames with slacker geometry and a longer wheelbase, disc braking and big volume, comfortable tyres.
The resulting machines are often somewhere between a cyclocross bike and a tourer. There's little doubt doubt that they're more versatile than a traditional road bike – but just how good are they off road?
Related: GT Grade Carbon 105 - video
We sent Tom Marvin, technical editor of our sibling print publication What Mountain Bike magazine to Iceland, on a 200km ride around iceland to find out. His tool for the job? GT's Grade – one one of the most popular bikes of this discipline.
Horse for the course - icelandic gravel on the gt grade
