When Cotic launched their steel drop bar Gravel/MTB bike I just knew I had to get my hands on one. they stated it was an MTB designed for drop bars and that’s something I’ve been trying to create for years using my old MTB hardtails but with limited success. The top tube on those hardtails, quite rightly was designed with flat or riser bars in mind. This makes the fitting of drop bars awkward. usually the bars end up too far away making you adopt a “superman” position leading to poor steering control and fatigue on the neck and shoulders. it also makes the bike look awful as to try to counteract this you need to run a short upright stem. Even then it was always a compromise.

So I sent an email to Cy at Cotic to see if there was any way to get a ride on one. Cy very helpfully arranged for a bike to be sent out. I was away doing a Devon Coast to coast ride when it arrived so when I got home I was straight out on it to see if it was all I had dreamed of!

I’m not going to comment too much on the kit that this bike comes with as it was built slightly differently to the complete bikes that Cotic sell and is a mix of parts, almost 100% because of the current shortages of components I guess. The shifters are Sram Force, the rear mech is Sram Rival, the cassette (11-51) is Shimano Deore and it all runs with a Shimano chain very smoothly. I’m not the biggest fan of Sram shifting so would this detract from the ride? There’s a dropper post fitted and this is activated by a drop bar mounted lever. It’s the first time I’ve tried one of these, my bike’s dropper is brake lever mounted (GRX) and it took a few miles of trying to drop the post with the brake lever before I adjusted to it.

The main triangle of the frame is made from 853 steel, a great compromise of weight and ride feel and the rear stays are made of good old 4130 steel. The rear stays are super skinny in that lovely way only steel can be. There’s nothing weird or unique about how this frame is constructed, no Cotic exlusive standards that you get on a lot of other frames. This means apart from the very last run to the dropper post all the cables and hoses are external, thank you Cotic!, the headset isn’t semi integrated or anything hard to get or work out, it’s also external cups and the best thing of all, the bottom bracket is also a threaded external unit. The frame will accommodate 29×2.4 or 27.5×2.8″ tyres. Unusually the bolt through axles take a 5mm Hex key, something that has been 6mm on all the other bikes I’ve owned. The frame has boost spacing (110/148mm hubs) and flat mount brake mounts.

Mounts, to be honest I lost count of the number of either bottle cage mounts or rack mounts but they can be found under the down tube, on the inside of the down tube, under the top tube, on top of the top tube on the seat tube and you can run a rack and full mud guards. There’s a little tab of the left hand side of the chainstay to attach one end of a full mudguard, a great little touch.

The Alpaca fork this bike came with also has rack and guard mounts and triple bosses on each leg. It will take a 29×2.6 or 27.5×3.0″ tyre and has flat mount brake mounts. Cotic can also supply a Salsa carbon fork for the bike.

The Ride, well, what can I say other than this bike is an absolute beast. The geometry is spot on, you can ride on the drops or the hoods all day without issue and without a ridiculously short stem. Anyone who has ridden a drop bar bike off road will know that the maximum control when going downhill is with your hands on the hook of the drops. On a converted MTB this is always an issue as you’re fully stretched out at that point and reaching the brakes can be difficult. No such issues here. grab the drops, drop the dropper and point the front wheel down hill and this thing feels like it will go wherever you point it. it is riotous fun drifting the rear wheel in the mud. Any technical trail can be finessed as the bike’s wheel base isn’t too long to be ponderous and it’ll turn in when needed. I don’t have the skills but i reckon you could whip the rear end of this bike over jumps if you wanted to. If you do find yourself out of your depth though the bike will just roll over stuff with the big tyres fitted. it is very confidence inspiring. However, don’t though let the liveliness of the ride put you off if you intend to load up with bags and disappear into the wilderness. I’m not sure how Cotic have managed it but as well as this liveliness when loaded up it feels stable and forgiving, it feels almost like its on a team building course and you have to close your eyes and trust that it’ll catch you when you fall backwards. It feels like It’ll look after you in all situations. very handy after a long day in the saddle when fatigue is affecting your concentration.

So who is this bike for? Firstly anyone who wants to put a massive grin on their face, the bike is so much fun. If you have never ridden a drop bar bike and are coming from an MTB back round you will feel right at home, If you have never ridden off road and want to leave the tarmac to dabble in the dirtside then this bike will flatter and cosset you while you hone your new found skills riding the trails.

This bike isn’t a short course racer, you can ride you local CX race on it and you’ll overtake lots of riders downhill but it’s a steel bike, it isn’t as light as an aluminium or carbon bike and the long distance comfort that comes from a steel frame won’t shine through on 45 minutes of effort. Where this bike will win though is long distance mixed and heavy terrain riding, think loaded up with your possessions on the trans cambian or HT500 or bag free just messing about in your local woods. Don’t be put off with the “drop bar MTB” label either, this bike is too versatile to be labelled. You could put gravel wheels and tyres in it and it would fly but personally I’d leave the fat tyres on for comfort and the way you can drift it into loamy corners while giggling to yourself.

For the price (£895 for frameset with steel fork at time of publishing) I can’t fault it, the £ to fun ratio is high.

So, Cotic Cascade, Drop bar MTB or gravel bike? Who cares, throw your leg over one and pedal off with the biggest grin you’ve had on your face for a long time!

you can find more info on the Cotic Cascade website here

There’s also a video review of the bike so you can get a closer look, just click below and please take the time to subscribe to my youtube channel to see more reviews on bikes and parts

Ever since Surly announced the corner bar in summer 2021 I’ve wanted to try one, I don’t know if Surly just tested the water with these new bars and the production run was small or that they didn’t import many into the UK but the entire stock at the UK distributor sold out really fast. Scroll forward to January 22 and the first availability for a pair was looking to be May 22. So one not very busy Saturday at work (don’t tell my boss….ok you can, I’m leaving anyway) I set about emailing every UK dealer/shop listed on the Surly website to see if they had a pair of Corner bars gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. I had many “sorry not until the summer” replies until Brixton Cycles messaged back saying they had a 46cm (measured to where the “hoods” join the top bar) in stock. I immediately got them in the basket and they turned up 4 days later at my back door.

Surly tag these bars as a “mountain bike drop bar” as they work with MTB style levers, they are supposed to give you the feel of drop bars without having to fork out £250+ on a set of road shifters that may or may not be compatible with your rear derailleur or brake calipers.

Now, I guess the big question is why would you want to put drop bars on your MTB in the first place? after all the riser or flat bar handlebar has evolved into a nice wide comfortable place that brings confidence and control to some gnarly riding. It keeps your head up so you can easily see the trail ahead on downhills or will easily cruise along sinuous singletrack. Why would you want to put a potentially narrower (i know there are some very wide drop bars) bar on where the best control is on the lowest part of them that stretches you out and drops your head into a position where you have to look up to see where you are going? Well, the reason I think is also why Gravel bikes have become so popular.

That reason is that mountain bikes have become so proficient at their job, smoothing out the trail ahead that your local routes have become a bit tame and dare I say it, boring! You barely notice the off road features that back in the mists of MTB time would have posed a challenge to your twitchy narrow barred and head angled early MTB…….hmmm narrow bars and twitchy handling was fun…..can you see where I’m going with this?

So throw a set of drop bars on your trail beating MTB and bring back the fun! only it’s not that simple. MTBs have very different shifters and brake set up to road/gravel bikes and that’s where it starts getting costly just to experiment with drop bars that you might actually hate after one ride. This is where the Corner bar comes in, it’s not cheap actually at over £100 but that’s a lot cheaper than a set of drop bars, road shifters, new cable inner and outer, bar tape and the hassle of doing it all.

I wouldn’t however sling a pair of these bars on your all mountain/enduro world cup gravity sled, keep that for the really gnarly trails and put the corner bars on a hardtail that languishes neglected, in the back of your shed. Even better if its pre “long , low and slack” geometry which is all the rage these days. that extra top tube length will stretch you too far out when on the drops.

So how does it ride? lets look at it from two perspectives,

1.You’re a seasoned drop bar rider, when you are on the drops you will feel right at home, the 65 degrees of flare make for rock solid handling on the rough stuff giving you masses of control. climbing on the drops also benefits from this flare as your hands fall into a very natural position far away from the shoulder constricting “aero tuck” of a traditional drop bar. Aero is not as it turns out, everything!

The thing that you will miss however is the fact that you cannot ride on the hoods, on drop bar levers the top of the hood is where you will spend most of your time. It is comfortable and you can still reach the brakes and get a reasonable amount of power into them. On the corner bar your hand sits awkwardly on the stump and that has either the shifter or brake mounting bracket on it or both depending on how you configure them. it’s fine for short periods but it’s not somewhere you want to be for long rides The other major issue is you can’t reach the brake lever from there either.

2. You’ve never ridden a drop bar bike in anger in your life and have only ever used a flat or riser bar. You will get your hands on the drops, chuck the bike downhill and either get transported back to the adrenaline rush of the early 90s MTB boom or immediately get what all those old timers are gushing about when they get into the “back in the day” routine. The flare and width are great for control and edge of your seat riding that a modern MTB on tame trails removes completely.

You’ve never sat with your hands on the hoods so don’t know what you are missing, you’ll climb, descend and cruise on the drops and that’s pretty much how these bars were designed. you can of course hold the bars either side of the stem too and that at least gives you another hand position.

So, if you’ve got an old geometry MTB then a set of these bars will bring it back to life for relatively peanuts in outlay…..well, maybe, maybe not. You see if your old mtb has a rigid fork then putting these bars on the standard length stem will stretch you right out. I was running a 60mm stem on my bike and to get comfy riding predominantly on the drops i ended up with a 35mm stem right at the top of the steerer with all the spacers underneath. If you have a suspension fork then the front will be higher and you’ll need to make less adjustments. So bare in mind some swapping of stems etc might have to take place. Oh, and can you wrap bar tape? because these work best with road bar tape on. Controls are easy to access from the drops, even a dropper lever.

One drawback, in my opinion is that these bars have a diameter of 25.5mm which is pretty old school. They do come with a shim to take it up to the popular 31.8mm standard of most stems but this small diameter does mean fitting accessories such as lights need an adaptor. I used some old inner tube wrapped around the bar.

Are these bars for everyone? not at all. do they weigh rather a lot and are expensive for some welded steel pipe? they certainly are. Would i put them on my MTB if it was the only MTB I had? no way. Would I have them on a “spare bike” just for fun? 100% I would.

They are quirky and not perfect at all. But I would stick a pair on a bike just for the hell of it, for shits and giggles because they are great fun for hitting your local stuff.

here’s a video that will give you more insight. Pleas take the time to subscribe for ,more videos like this

more details from the surly website here

This sunday 6/2/22 at 1800hrs GMT the Surly Corner Bar review goes live on the UKgravelCO youtube channel. Just click on the link below, set a remonder and see if this bar can make your MTB into a gravel bike.