The Radavist

If our Top Ten Beautiful Bicycles list serves as an indicator of your interests, our Top Ten Review Bikes speak to the readership’s curiosities and potential next bike buys. This year’s Top Ten Review Bikes ran the gamut from carbon gravel bikes with proprietary passive suspension to actual full suspension bikes and everything in between.

Let’s check out what review bikes pushed the needle for you this year!

After three years in the making, Cycling UK and Natural Resources Wales launched Traws Eryri this summer, a new 200-kilometer bikepacking route that crosses Eryri National Park in North Wales. Among the first to ride it, Katherine Moore gives her verdict on the Welsh rough stuff.

Wabi-sabi is an ancient and deeply-held Japanese philosophy that sees the beauty in imperfection, appreciates simplicity, and accepts that change is inevitable. This concept, if applicable to any bicycle, feels most appropriate for a custom, handmade, rigid singlespeed 29er mountain bike. Especially a Monē Bikes. That’s not a dig at all on Cjell’s abilities as a framebuilder but as he spelled it out in a text to Matt Mason, this bike’s owner and the co-founder of the Monumental Loop, “Gotta fuck it up… just a tiny bit.”

Travel is routinely romanticized. And it is romantic—how could having the privilege of “checking out” of the daily drum of work, family, bills, etc., and the attendant stress in favor of experiencing a new place not be? The word vacation is, of course, derived from the verb “to vacate,” and while going on vacation is about the act of leaving, it’s also about finding. Finding new culture, new landscapes, new experiences, but maybe just as importantly it’s about finding new perspective on what it is you’ve placed on hold.

After two weeks spent bike touring in Italy in October, Hailey Moore reflects on what she found while away and the paradox of trying to experience more than the Trip Advisor-version of a place without missing the five-star sights. Read on for part one of her Italy Divide reflections while riding from Trento to Florence.

Falconer Cycles is now making titanium frames and last weekend, he unveiled a stunning titanium hardtail touring bike to John…

For creatives – be it sculptors or painters – expanding into other mediums is often fulfilling and cathartic. Learning new methodologies and processes keeps makers engaged with their work. Lots of bicycle fabricators start out TIG welding steel frames and, later, expand into working with titanium. This offers new horizons for not only the brand but also for loyal followers to access a superior material.

Cameron Falconer is the latest builder to be documented here expanding into titanium from steel. While in Southern Arizona last weekend, John caught up with Cam who showcased a titanium hardtail touring bike with a custom titanium rack. This was “John’s modern bike shoot of the year” as he put it excitedly and you can see why below…

Armed with bike, camera, and plenty of curiosity Werka Szalas set out for a month on the road in Northern Spain. The main focus of her trip was to visit the Picos de Europa National Park in the province of Asturias but she couldn’t help spending time detouring through Leon and Cantabria, too. Read on and check out her gallery for a closer look at a few of the lesser-known corners of Spain. 

Curious about touring the Midwest? Have you ever wondered what’s so special about the largest freshwater lake (by volume) in the world? What’s up with those Yoopers? How and why would you bring a bike to an island National Park where it is illegal to ride? Check out Spencer Harding’s (kind of) review of Bikepacking Roots’ Northwoods route on the shores of Lake Superior and some musing about not following that GPS line all the time. 

Last year Mitchell Connell fell in love with a custom road bike he saw at a bike show. After missing an opportunity to test ride the bike, he took a road trip to Raleigh, North Carolina to find it and its creator, Charles Thompson of Fine Bikes. Along the way, Mitchell got to pay a visit to the iconic local shop, Oak City Cycling, and get the tour of Raleigh’s mixed-surface riding.  

With its mixed-surface riding through four distinct sections of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument that surrounds Las Cruces, New Mexico, the Monumental Loop has plenty of spice—and not just from the chile you’ll find in Hatch. Every fall, the Loop’s organizers extend an open invitation for cyclo-tourists to come experience the 250-mile desert figure eight as part of the Dangerbird group ride event. This year’s rolling extravaganza was a coupled with the Bikepacking Summit, which Daniel Zaid attended and reports on below…