I must have passed this bridleway literally 100s of times but a couple of days ago I noticed a new sign so myself and Lisa from @my.bike.adventure decided to explore. It turned out to be an interesting ride.

Cargo bib shorts are the in thing right now and most shorts making companies have at least one model on their range so what makes the Lusso Terra shorts different?

MADE IN MANCHESTER are the three words that made these shorts stand out to me before I’d even pulled them on. In a world where strawberries can be grown in Argentina, packed in Indonesia and sold in a shop in Birmingham it’s a great thing to see that a company is manufacturing on the UK.

Designed as part of Lusso’s Terra range these bib shorts are hand made with natural and sustainable fabrics from Italy. They have two rear mesh pockets and a pocket on each thigh.

The bib straps themselves are made of the same mesh material and so there is plenty of breathability. the end of the legs has a wide elasticated section that grips well without digging in. The thigh pockets swallow a modern smart phone easily so gels and energy bars can be stowed securely. Even with something heavy like a phone the pockets never felt baggy or restricted movement

The material feels luxurious against your skin and the pad feels just on the right side of reassuringly thick. It supported me comfortably over short and long distance rides, with and without chamois cream. I’d have no qualms about wearing these on a multi day trip in hot or cold weather (both experienced during the test period). The rear pockets were useful but as with all cargo rear pockets near to your body heat if you intend to carry something moisture sensitive in there it may be as well to bag it in something waterproof as it can steamy in there. Thankfully I haven’t crashed in these shorts yet but after many rides including those in wet and gritty conditions they continue to show little signs of wear. They also wash very well, keeping their shape and the pad remains supportive.

Sizing is normal, I usually wear an XL short being just over 180cm tall and the XL terras felt good, although I might go up one size for a longer bib strap. Lusso offer returns so you can get the correct fit.

It is also great to see some different colours from the usual boring black most shorts come in, the Lusso Terra’s can be purchased in slate (pictured) or thyme both have pockets in a contrast colour.

The Lusso Terra bib shorts are quite simply a great feeling and looking short that will support your adventures over many rides. The fact that they are hand made in the UK and Lusso’s stance on sustainability makes them stand out above other quality shorts in the same price bracket, definitely check these out when you are looking for your next pair of shorts.

you can find out more about these shorts, Lusso and their thoughts on sustainability on their website here

There’s lots of cross over in footwear between Gravel riding and mountain biking, a good cross country mountain bike shoe makes for a great gravel bike shoe too. The cleat system allows the use of double sided clip-in pedals, something I find essential for off road riding, they are stiff enough in the sole for all day riding but have enough give to allow for walking unrideable sections and some don’t look iut of place at a mid ride pub stop.

Quoc do a range of shoes for road, touring and MTB, they sent me these Escape models to try out. I asked for the amber colour as A) I really liked it and B) I thought they’d stand out better in the pictures!

The shoe comes with a polyurethane upper which is easy to keep clean and a glass fibre reinforced sole with rubber tread that works well on all but the slimiest roots. The tread clears well when filled with sticky mud. Quoc use their own Boa-like closure using a turn-able dial that makes micro adjustments on the fly really easy. The upper has punched holes for breathability and the “lace” fitment is reflective. The heel padding is comfortable and I experienced no heel lift throughout the test. The toe cap guard did a good job of protecting the shoe from damage. Power transfer to the pedals felt great and I couldn’t feel the pedal through the shoe when pushing down, something essential for long days out to reduce fatigue and avoid foot hot spots.

The shoes are stiff but manage walking well, I’d say they are at the more racy end of the spectrum though and maybe hike a biking up a mountain path would be possible but a bit more give in the sole might be better. It’s always a trade off between pedalling stiffness and walking in any cycling shoe though. The shoe has the option of fitting studs in the toe for extra grip when say in a CX race and running with the bike.

The Quoc shoes look and feel great, it’s refreshing to see a different approach to shoe design. It’s also good for me at least, that these shoes are not full of mesh on the upper, Quoc have punched tiny holes instead. Too many shoes seem to be designed for hot weather and their vents are perfect if you only ride in summer or in countries with high temperatures but I live in the UK and suffer with cold feet so this may mean I can extend their use into the colder months. This lack of venting doesn’t seem to affect the breathability though as (in contradiction to what was just written) during the test period the UK welcomed it’s hottest June for years!

The Quoc website gives a good fit guide and askes you to measure your feet rather than stick to your usual size. In the event my usual size corresponded with the guide size after measuring. The shoes felt comfortable both on and off the bike so. So you’d think everything was rosy and perfect then, well not quite.

Firstly and in no way affecting pedalling performance, the shoes creak!, more so off the bike when hike a biking (more like walking into cafes) but sometimes when pedalling too. This may lessen as the shoes wear in though. What I found that was an issue for me was the cleat position. Even with the cleat set as far back as it would go on the shoe it felt too far forward. It felt like I was pedalling with my toes rather than the ball of my foot. I’ve compared the Quoc shoe side by side with my normal cycling shoe and to within less than a millimetre they are exactly the same length sole but my usual shoe has much more cleat adjustment and I’ve not got that cleat all the way back either.

This cleat position makes you feel like you are gripping the pedal with my toes and after 30+ miles this starts to make my feet ache. I’m pretty sure the shoe is the correct size, the size guide and my feet tell me so but I do wonder if the next size up would give more cleat adjustment? I fear though that would bring with it some heel lift and the associated problem of wearing shoes to big for my feet.

The Quoc Escape Off Road shoe is a well made quality shoe with good pedalling dynamics and in my opinion looks great but if you like your cleat quite far back I’d look carefully at the sole compared to your current shoes carefully before setting them up so you can return them for a different size pair if needed.

You can find more information on the Quoc Escape off Road shoe here

I’ll come straight out and admit it, I do not like top tube bags, they are never the right size, they suffer from floppy bag syndrome unless you use a stabilising system like the excellent 76projects one reviewed here or, and by far the thing I like the least about them is that when you stand up on the bike to climb or sprint my knees rub on the bag! I know this is a personal thing for me and that the vast majority of riders don’t suffer this but having mentioned it on instagram quite a few other people said they had the same issues.

One of those people was James at tailfin.cc. Tailfin have recently added top tube bags to their excellent range of bike packing kit and this included this tapered design said to be perfect for those of us with a knee inwards pedalling action. I immediately emailed Tailfin and James was convinced the new design would solve my issues, as it had for him and sent me one to try out.

The bag is a dual design and can be bolted to your top tube if you have the mounts for a super clean look or using the supplied straps it can fit just about any frame design. The straps thread through two very sticky rubber mounts that grip the top tube of your bike like limpets! If you are bolting the bag on the bolts go through the middle of these mounts giving a even more tenacious grip.

The bag material is a welded design and comes in two varieties, a zip version (only option on this 0.8L pack) or zip or flip lid for quick access on the larger versions. Tailfin describe it as a sculpted design to be knee friendly. This means the bottom tapers towards the top. The bag does not come with  head tube strap as tailfin claim it doesn’t need one. Inside is one large compartment with a cushioned insert and a side pocket.

I first used a bike that allowed a bolt on bag and immediately tried to make it top heavy by putting heavy items at the top inside it and then going for a ride. Straight away I noticed the difference to other bags I’ve tried in that my knees didn’t touch it! I tried to dislodge the bag by deliberately riding over rough ground and it was rock solid. It became a silly game of leaning the bike over or trying to rattle it from side to side just to make the thing move at all! It was all in vain, no movement. This also meant accessing the bag via the zip on the move was simplicity itself, open and closing to grab a snack was easy and i got so confident that it would open and close I didn’t even have o look down. This 0.8l bag was just slightly too small to fit my pixel 5 smartphone so if you want to keep a phone in there go for one of the larger sizes but for energy bars, Gregg’s sausage rolls, emergency Haribo and tools it is spot on.

Next i swapped to a bike without mounts and fitted the straps, a word on those actually as they were top quality and worked so neatly with a tiny holder to hold any over lap on the strap they looked good too. Any fears that this mounting system would be looser were unfounded, again the bag was rock solid (this time on a MTB).

The tailfin top tube pack has been on but never off various bikes since April and that says everything you need to know from a self confessed top tube pack hater! The shape works fantastically with my knees, I’d say 95% of the time my knees don’t touch it. On other bags it was the other way around with my knees hitting them to the point of snagging knee warmers. Tailfin are correct, it does not need a head tube strap to be stable. Using the bolt on method and the lack of needing the head strap means the pack looks very good and tidy indeed. The fact that is it functions superbly and the fact that is is 100% waterproof too is just icing on the cake.

The tailfin top tube pack is currently £52 and that sounds like a lot of money, this cost means it is in the same price bracket of some bespoke bag makers stuff but, from a design, materials and function perspective it is worth every penny.

you can see more details on the Tailfin Top Tube Pack on the Tailfin website

A gravel specific saddle? No sniggering at the back! When Wilderness Trail Bikes started showing
their new range of saddles the one labelled “Gravelier” obviously stood out to me. I messaged the
guys at WTB UK and asked if I could test one of the new seats to see if there was such a thing as a
gravel specific saddle and they very kindly sent one out to me to try out.
Saddles, and it seems silly to write this as it’s blindingly obvious, are a very personal thing. We all
have the same bones in our body but that is where the similarity ends. Because we are all different
the fact that a particular saddle might be very comfortable or uncomfortable to me doesn’t mean
it’ll be the same for you. So take any saddle review you read with a pinch of salt. I can tell you how
the saddle interacts with the seat post, the quality of the construction and how it performs in
different conditions and how hard wearing it is but really at the end of the day the only way for you
to know if a saddle works for you is to try it and do so over many miles. Yes, I know, that is difficult
to achieve without forking out some cash on something you might hate. So what I’ll do in this review
is tell you how this saddle compares to my regular saddle and to the many I’ve ridden in the last 53
years. Don’t forget though that your bum might see things differently!

My regular saddle is a Charge spoon, they don’t even still make them so I’ve been looking for an
alternative for a while for the time when the back stock o those models dries up. I’ve always liked
the look of the shorter fit saddles, again this is silly because you should be looking for comfort first
not looks but hey, I’m a bit of a tart when it comes to shiny bike parts. The WTB Gravelier is around a
third shorter (246mm) than my charge and has a cut out in the middle, said to ease perineal pressure. If
you’ve ever been on a ride and felt numbness down there then that could be caused by that
pressure. WTB say gravel riders tend to sit more forward and so the saddle accommodates this with a narrow front and a curved shape that widens towards the back. personally it think i sit the same on all my bikes .

The material is generally smooth with little dimples and is just the right balance of
grippy/slippery. There is nothing worse than a saddle that grips onto your shorts when you move
around on it or slide your bum off the back to counter balance the bike on a steep descent or one
that you slide off forwards on when you brake hard as the saddle has such a frictionless surface. On
this the WTB is perfect. The rails on this model are titanium, it weighs a hair under 210g on my kitchen scale, there is a lighter carbon railed version.
Fitting the saddle was as easy as your seat post makes it (some seat posts are a right pain to swap
saddles on) as the rails are standard size and there’s plenty of room for fore-aft adjustments. I set
this one so the rear would have been in line with the saddle I swapped out as I felt that would be a
good place to start. This made the front look very short in comparison to my old saddle but as
written above, comfort before looks.

A new saddle always feels weird to start with and so the first decent length ride was spent adjusting
the saddle angle, it ended up pretty flat in relation to the ground and i moved it forward slightly on
the rails. I also raised the seat post a few mm as the distance from the rails to the top of the saddle
was less that my old saddle, bear all this in mind when you try any new saddle.

The Ride I received this saddle back in May when the UK was having a very wet late spring/early
summer so I got to try it in a variety of conditions, wet and muddy, dry and dusty and rides with all
that going on at the same time. The saddle has a little padding, just enough to support you without
feeling like an over stuffed sofa but with a bit of give for cushioning over the rough stuff. The
titanium rails help here as they have a springiness that you wouldn’t notice riding along side
watching the saddle but are glad of over longer distances. I’ll admit the first few rides I wasn’t
convinced but more position adjustment trial and error and I came to like the saddle more and
more. Lots of short 50k rides and the longest so far being 120k proved that the saddle was
supportive in the right places and the hole in the middle did seem to work. When swapping to my other bike with my regular saddle I could definitely feel pressure down below that I didn’t feel on the
WTB. I’m still not sure if this is gravel specific though as I’ve tried it on my MTB too and it was equally as comfy and easy to move yourself back over it for steep descents.

I can honestly say this is the best “short fit” saddle I’ve tried so far (fizik, selle Italia, san marco, specialized and prologo to name a few). I think WTB should change the name though as it’s good enough for a lot more bikes than just the gravel models

more details on this saddle can be found on the WTB Website

UKGC Podcast latest episode just went live, Russ Roca, along side his partner Laura run Path Less Pedalled, a website and youtube channel that is a refreshing change to most of the others. PLP is about riding for fun, not worrying about average speed or what you wear to ride in, but Russ can tell you more about that as I embark on my first trans atlantic podcast. Russ was on Montana and I was in Worcestershire, that will explain the sound issues we had. I hope those don’t spoil the great chat I had with a true enthusiast for “real” cycling.

listen via the link below or search for uk gravel collective cycling podcast where you normally listen to your podcasts