Hmmm, unsure if a question for in here or not, at a quandry as to what to do. So far i have 2 bikes. My Road Bike (2x12 AXS, 28mm tyres), and a MTB bike (slightly too small, 1x10 and big knobbly tyres).
My general use case is to use my road bike for 95% of riding, which is done on the roads. For the purpose it's perfect, but there's sometimes occasions i'd prefer to venture on some rougher ground when i mess up my route planning and i don't trust the tyres for puncture resistance. For the other 5% i use the MTB, generally this is pottering into town for a drink where i just want normal trainers or venturing a bit off road which can be anything like loose gravel/rock. Image below of probably the "worst" kind of terrain, main issue being the rocks can be fairly sharp.
I keep thinking the MTB isn't ideal for that 5% and it probably stops it growing from 5% up to more regular rides. The main reasons being the gearing doesn't go low enough for me and the tyres are so big/knobbly that it's pretty slow and hard work on the roads.
My plan was always to use an old wheelset, buy some 40mm gravel tyres, and then have a backup wheelset, but once i started pricing up new cassette, rotors, tyres etc it was quickly hitting around £300 which felt excessive. I then considered buying some 45mm less aggressive tyres for the mountain bike. Running a low psi should mean they handle the terrain above alright, and since it's always dry here i don't need too much grip, and i'll never be flying down hills anyway because i'm a wuss. I've an old unused Deore (maybe Tourney) chainring too which would increase my gearing quite a bit for the flatter parts. The caveat being i'm not sure how comfortably it would be to push this out to longer touring rides of 50miles or so. I could add drop bars and turn it into a hybrid bike as many people are doing now, but then i need new shifters and it turns into a big project.
I could just stick some 38/40mm tyres on my road bike, accept it'll be slightly slower but it's not like i'm particularly fast anyway. Then i just use that for all purposes, i then still get the nice electronic gearing and simplicity of the same bike. Downside being i still wouldn't use it for my pottering for a drink because of the pedals and i cba swapping pedals around, and i'd still have the same complaints on my MTB on those days, an it's harder work as my wife has an ebike she can do 25mph on and it kills me!
Finally, i could probably spend €300-€500 and just buy a gravel bike. Stick some flat pedals on it and be done with it. Downside there is it's an extra bike to squeeze past the wife and also it feels like it'd make my MTB redundant.
Anyone got any thoughts? At the moment i keep ordering things and then cancelling the order an hour later as i keep changing my mind!
Though I suppose it is sort of related. Sooner we get the house, sooner I can start buying bike bits again.
