jollyroger88 wrote:
yep! gravel has become more popular in italy in the latest couple of years, yet not as huge as road riding
that's funny. when i was in tuscany in 2019 there were ZERO gravel bikes. i was there for a launch and a bunch of the euro press was there and they thought gravel would never catch on in europe and specifically not in italy. but everywhere my wife and i went with our gravel bikes, where there were groups of cyclists (e.g., club teams ending a ride at a cafe) groups of riders would crowd around our bikes.
the funny thing is that the strade bianchi is made for gravel bikes. you can ride the groomed and flat stuff with a road bike, sure, but once the gravel points up or down hill - which it does in chianti and unless you stick to a river valley - the road bike is not fun on those roads. which is why nobody back in 2019 was on them. they had the wrong bikes.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman