Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2025 i Cyclist

Not that I’m complaining. I’d rather go out riding in 15°C and take an extra layer than go out in 30°C and find myself shrivelling to the texture and colour of a sun-dried tomato. Too hot is worse than too cold, which is why I’m convinced that autumn is now the best season to ride a bike. Summer has dropped down the ranking, not just because of temperatures that can fuse tyre rubber to tarmac, but because it seems that each weekend in summer, half the country has the same idea to drive out to a nice country pub, meaning every road is gridlocked with sweating, seething motorists. By September they’re all safely back indoors with Soccer Saturday. Spring makes a good case for being top cycling season, but a…

1 Stox Cycling Mid-Calf socks £34.95, stoxenergy.com Someone recently accused us of plagiarism – their word, not ours. And the word from Stox is that its compression socks boost circulation, fuel muscles, flush lactic acid and reduce swelling. Made from moisture-wicking Dryarn, they feature graduated compression, a padded forefoot, a seamless design, mesh zones and a compressive midfoot band to stimulate the circulation of blood. 2 Snēk Pencil Stache bar bag £43, snekcycling.com Americans smile, Europeans skilometre. Snēk (pronounced sneak) makes slick and neat (hence sneak) accessories. This 1.3-litre, 140g bag is made from durable Cordura fabric with waterproof zippers and a stiff foam insert to hold its shape. It features internal and external pockets, padded phone storage and a key clip on the inside. 3 Full Gas Forever by…

For Austrian cyclists climbing to the border with Italy, it’s known as the Timmelsjoch. For Italian cyclists climbing to the border from the other side, it’s known as the Passo del Rombo. But long before any cyclists tackled this pass, it was a well-trodden route for smugglers. From the 13th to 15th centuries, Ötztaler Kraxenträger, or basket bearers, risked their lives to haul goods such as food, livestock and materials over the high-altitude pass, as it was the shortest route to the old capital of Merano, home of Tyrol Castle. Those smugglers would have to wait until 1933 before their route became paved, when Mussolini decided he needed a military access point, just in case he was in the mood to attack Austria. Then they would have to wait until…

Eat Sleep Cycle is inviting riders worldwide to become part of its journey through the Own the Ride crowdfunding campaign. Built on a passion for adventure, community, and sustainability, the company has grown from curated tours and premium bike rentals into a complete ecosystem of Cycling Hubs, Cycling Apparel, and award-winning riding experiences across Europe and beyond. Now, cyclists have the chance to invest directly in this expanding vision. Join a movement that celebrates cycling, connects people through community, and champions responsible travel. Invest today—own the ride. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment.…

‘Amurderous climber, always the same sustained rhythm, a little machine with a lower gear than the rest, turning his legs at a speed that would break your heart, tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.’ So spake former French champion Raphaël Géminiani of Charly Gaul, winner of the 1958 Tour de France, whose mercurial talent saw him branded the greatest climber of his generation, and beyond. As descriptions go it’s a corker (they knew how to talk back then), and although I couldn’t be further from that souplesse-tastic truth, there is something about the Litespeed Coll dels Reis that at least lets me feel like I could sniff such greatness downwind. Performance-wise titanium will never rival carbon, but I wasn’t prepared for how much I’d end up loving this bike This…

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Eat Sleep Cycle is inviting riders worldwide to become part of its journey through the Own the Ride crowdfunding campaign. Built on a passion for adventure, community, and sustainability, the company has grown from curated tours and premium bike rentals into a complete ecosystem of Cycling Hubs, Cycling Apparel, and award-winning riding experiences across Europe and beyond. Now, cyclists have the chance to invest directly in this expanding vision. Join a movement that celebrates cycling, connects people through community, and champions responsible travel. Invest today—own the ride. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment.…

Mountains are an integral part of Slovenia’s identity. Its highest peak, Triglav, is even etched onto the national flag and coat of arms. Where the country borders with Italy and Austria in its northwest corner, the Julian Alps form a natural barrier that has been fought over for centuries and has shaped the nation’s history, but which has also played a crucial role in the country’s cycling success. Despite having a population of just two million – similar to that of Greater Manchester – Slovenia has nurtured a host of pro riders since its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Names such as Tadej Valjavec and Janez Brajkovič may ring some bells from Grand Tours gone by, but it has been within the past decade that the country’s sporting assembly line…

Argonaut’s RM3 has achieved renown for that most mercurial of characteristics: ride quality. Cyclist’s own James Spender dubbed the bike the best he’d ever ridden back in issue 135 – something he maintains is still the case today. ‘It punches, it climbs, it carves, it cruises, it could go all day most places,’ he says in his review, before going on to ask the question: how? The short answer is through a combination of constant refinement to a single road bike design for more than a decade, novel construction techniques and an attention to detail that may well be peerless. However, if ever a bike deserved to have its full story told, it’s the RM3. Rusted roots ‘I started Argonaut in 2007, building both fillet brazed and lugged steel bikes,’…

‘I used to be in this club called Nine to Five Racing,’ says Graham Shrive, Factor’s director of engineering. ‘As you can imagine, it was for racers who also had a normal job. With the Monza, that’s who we wanted to appeal to. ‘Up until now we’ve been solely premium. We had a lot of doors closed to us in some territories because we didn’t have anything in that meat and potatoes range. This is us growing the base of our pyramid a bit,’ he adds. The result is the Monza, a bike that overlaps significantly with the Ostro VAM, the aero bike ridden by WorldTour team Israel-Premier Tech, in terms of both its appearance and performance objectives. The differences lie not only in the number of zeros after the pound…

It takes a certain confidence to overhaul a bike that has garnered a wealth of five-star reviews and sold in large numbers worldwide, but London-based steel specialist Fairlight has repeatedly refreshed the Strael, its endurance road bike, throughout its lifespan. The company released the original in 2017 as a four-season bike with a lively ride thanks to its tyre clearance, mudguard compatibility and race bike DNA. However whimsical a steel race bike may sound today, this notion is reflected in the Strael’s sporty geometry, relatively low weight and its two Transcontinental Race triumphs. Skip forward to 2025 and the Strael 4.0 has evolved into an all-road bike with clearance for 39mm tyres, up from the 3.0’s 36mm. The new frameset is claimed to be 280g lighter in size 54 and…

It’s the cyclist’s dream: jack in the corporate nine-to-five, load up the car, head for the high mountains and spend every day riding in the tyre tracks of Tour de France legends. For most, that’s how it stays – a dream – but there’s a small percentage of dreamers who manage to make it their reality. Alexander Plaisted is one of them. ‘I think a part of me has always wanted to live in the mountains,’ says Plaisted. ‘I grew up in Oxfordshire riding mountain bikes. We spent a lot of time in the woods digging sketchy jumps, but in 2001 I decided the local hills just weren’t big enough so I drove out to Les Gets in the French Alps with my bike, a tent and enough cash to…

On a sunny summer’s day, a walk up Pendle Hill is a pleasant stomp of about an hour, with the reward of unrestricted views over Lancashire’s Ribble Valley. However, on a cold winter’s day, Pendle Hill is about as bleak and unwelcoming as any place in Britain, its featureless moors of rough grass offering no shelter from wind and rain nor providing any landmarks to help you find your bearings in the mist. It’s exactly the kind of setting where, if you were of a suggestible nature, you would expect to find witches. In the early 17th century, Pendle Hill was home to 12 witches – at least that was the finding of the infamous Pendle Witch Trials of 1612, when a group of women from two families were found…

Organised chaos and hot stress. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think of the Tour de France. Then I worry if I will have enough shirts to last over four weeks on the road covering first the three-week men’s race and then the ten-day Tour de France Femmes. For anyone who works in professional cycling, the Tour is almost certainly the most lucrative – and most stressful – job of the year. It’s also unmissable, a mobile trade fair for the riders, the sponsors, the teams, the media and everyone on the scene – right down to the VIP guest car drivers, most of whom are ex-pros. It is everything they say it is. The Tour is indeed, inimitably, the Tour. It is overblown, filthy, hot,…

In the mid-1980s, despite regularly making nuisances of ourselves at our local bike shop, my girlfriend Josie and I were determined to resist all attempts to turn us into racing cyclists. While happy to spend hours chatting to the mechanics about their exploits on the local racing circuit, the thought of having to join a club, shave our legs and wear Lycra shorts seemed a step too far. We just enjoyed riding our bikes. Our imaginations were fired less by Hinault, LeMond and Kelly – Channel 4’s coverage of the Tour de France had yet to begin – and more by round-the-world cyclist Nick Sanders, daredevil cousins Nick and Dick Crane who were planning to ride up Mount Kilimanjaro, and school teacher Neal Clough who’d just written a book, Two…

In the generation revision before this one, Zipp touted the benefits of its Total System Efficiency approach to wheel design. The idea is that it attempts to balance the various factors influencing speed – wind resistance, rolling resistance, weight and vibrational losses – rather than trying to optimise one under the assumption that superiority in that area will outstrip shortcomings in others. The result last time was wheels that were wider, lighter and hookless. This new generation builds on that concept while refining certain elements, so these 303 SW wheels (the new name for the Firecrest tier, which remains one rung below the NSW level) don’t look much different to what went before – except for one obvious new feature that we’ll come to shortly. They still use the ZR1…