Great British Gravel Rides Cycling the wild trails of England, Scotland & Wales by Markus Stitz

Markus Stitz is no stranger to riding a gravel bike or putting a good route together. For this book, he went one better – he asked 25 experienced gravel lovers across Great Britain for their favourite local loop. The result is the next best thing to being taken out by the route designers themselves.

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If you haven't heard of Markus Stitz, he's born in Germany, puts routes together, and writes, makes films and takes pictures about cycling. He's single-speeded around the world on a mountain bike, he founded Bikepacking Scotland and has put together gravel and bikepacking routes all across Scotland.

And even if you only vaguely follow what's happening in the ultra-racing/bikepacking/gravel community, you'll recognise at least some of the contributors. This is what initially piqued my interest in this book – if a route's recommended by the likes of Jenny Graham, Emma Osenton, Josh Ibbett, Charlie Hobbs, Mark Beaumont and sometime road.cc contributor and long time off.road.cc contributor, Matt Page, colour me interested. This is not to disrespect to the other contributors – I'm just naming some people whose exploits I've personally watched on YouTube or read about.

Included are 10 routes on mainland Scotland, one on the Isle of Jura, five routes in Northern England (as in Sheffield and up), eight in Southern England and two in Wales. I didn't ride them all, but I've ridden variations of a handful, have local knowledge of one and did go and ride one of the routes in an area I hadn't been before.

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For each route you get a little fact file including distance/ascent, a grading that goes from easy, straightforward and challenging to expert – with an explanation of what the grades mean in the book's introduction. There's also a description of what the terrain is like with a breakdown of riding surfaces, as well as a guide to the best time to ride the route. There's also a map, and a few pictures, and you can download a GPX file for each route from the publisher's website.

Each contributor introduces themselves and what gravel riding means to them, and their route, there's a route description, with recommended places to stop as well.

For the route I tried – Katherine Moore's shortened version of the East Devon Trail – this description was absolutely spot on; it felt like the next best thing to Katherine taking us around the route herself.

I took three fellow gravelleurs along, and as I'd organised it, I was slightly concerned that it might all be a bit too tame, or too much road, or whatever. This was an unfounded concern as the route was very well considered; there was plenty of non-tarmac and the off-road sections were mint. After the ride, all four of us were keen to both ride the route again with other friends that would equally enjoy the gravel on offer, and to try some of the other routes in the book.

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Markus's brief to the contributors was to share their entry for 'Britain's best gravel ride', ideally accessible by public transport. The unknown-to-me route I tried starts at Exeter railway station for example.

The book's not particularly cheap at £25, but for 26 rides that is less than a quid each, so in my opinion great value. There's lots of variation in distance – the shortest route just 18km and the longest a whopping 604km – and grading, and each of the routes has a list of other routes nearby to go and explore in case you want to make them longer or visit the area for more than one ride.

Conclusion

As I mentioned above, I particularly like the fact that the book describes the local rider's favourite route. The default option for my usual gravelly companions is to ride from home; we are lucky that this range gives us access to Salisbury Plain, the Ridgeway and South Wales for longer day rides and King Alfred's Way for a multi-dayer. Being able to start and end at home is great – and was particularly so in Covid times – but so is exploring a new area.

This book has given me the motivation to go and do some exploring further afield even if it means a bit of travel to and from the start. If the rides the book describes that are known to me are anything to go by, then I reckon the ones new to me won't disappoint.

Verdict

Want to go ride some excellent gravel somewhere you haven't been before? Buy this book