If you need to carry food or essentials on your bike without resorting to large frame or seatpacks then the OrNot Bar Bag is a useful size if you want to be able to carry what you need, with a solid design that is stable over the roughest ground.

What’s in a name? Or how important is a name? UK brand Saracen has chosen Levarg - gravel backwards - which is either inspired or lazy. Either way, underneath the name, the Levarg SL is a fast and fun bike well-suited to taming the UK’s poorly surfaced roads and bashing along dirt and gravel tracks.

If you’ve got £2,000 to spend on a new bike and want a good all-round trail bike, you could do a lot worse than consider Merida’s One-Twenty 600. The 120mm travel 29er is a well-specced option with good geometry and suspension that combines to provide very good trail manners whether grinding up or slashing down.

If the current crop of gravel bikes aren't rugged enough for you, then this brand new OPEN WI.DE with clearance for 2.4" mountain bike tyres may well appeal. It's a brand new model from the small company that in 2015 launched the UP, one of the most interesting gravel and adventure bikes at the time because it boasted spaced for 2.1" tyres, which at the time seemed massive to drop bar cyclists.

You might have seen the new GT Grade and Open WI.DE. gravel bikes launched last week, but slipping under the radar was Allied’s radical-looking new Able. It didn’t go unnoticed in its debut race at Dirty Kanza however, as Colin Strickland and Amity Rockwell won the men and women’s races on the brand new Allied gravel bike. Talk about a dream debut. 

Last year Cannondale launched the budget Topstone with an aluminium frame, and this year it has launched the Topstone with a carbon frame and a radical new Kingpin rear suspension design providing 30mm of compliance to deliver a gravel bike it intends to provide the “smoothest and most capable ride.”

Gritfest was so much fun last year (and it looks like being even better this year) that I’m going back this weekend for more sweet gravel riding in mid-Wales. Before I load up the car and head on over, here’s a quick bike check of the Open WI.DE I'll be riding.