Originally Posted by
grolby
What's interesting about the trend is that there's a wide variety of surface types that all get lumped in under "gravel" that really can be quite different, so making a "gravel bike" by definition means making a fairly generalist machine. Cyclocross bikes have got stuck with this role of the "do anything" bike for the last decade and a half or more, but they aren't actually perfectly suited for it. Not if you want a bike that's optimized for cyclocross racing, anyway. I think a lot of bikes like the Surly Cross-Check and other do-anything CX bikes aren't really spiritually pure CX bikes at all. So it's nice to see the all-rounder category re-emerge and let cyclocross bikes stay a focused category.
I think you just changed my mind on this.
I regularly use my road bike with 23C tires on everything from washed out sections of road that have been filled in with old bricks and chunks of concrete baby heads to nasty arsed back county goat paths here in Taiwan. I've been doing it for decades and have never given it a second thought. Now if my entire ride was on stuff like this I might put together something better suited but I've never felt the need. If I were doing these gravel fondos that could change.