6 best gravel bikes under £1,000 for your off-roading adventures

Genesis’ croix de fer is a very popular and highly versatile machine that the British brand touts as “the original adventure bike”. However, with prices starting at around £1,300, it may be a little too much for those on tight budgets. The CDA (croix de aluminium) addresses this problem by swapping steel for alloy, resulting in a bike that boasts all of its elder sibling’s versatility, but ringing in at a much more palatable price point.

The 10 is the most affordable option in the cda range but still provides everything a cyclist needs to take their adventures off-road. The Shimano Claris groupset offers reliable shifting and stopping is taken care of by a mechanical disc brake setup. We love the vibrant orange colour too, which is a nice change of pace from the bland paint jobs normally found on bikes in this price bracket.

There’s a saying in the cycling community: steel is real. After all, this is the original frame building material, and although carbon fibre has eclipsed it over the last few decades, it still holds a special place in every red-blooded cyclist’s heart. A steel tourer is, after all, the vinyl record to a carbon aero machine’s Spotify subscription. But it’s not the most common choice for a budget bike, that honour belongs to aluminium.

That’s why this great looking bike from Marin is such a welcome change of pace, offering an all-access ticket to the ferrous-metal party for a very reasonable £785. It’s a super comfortable and cushioned ride, plus you get all of the strength benefits of steel too. Groupset-wise, Shimano Claris 2x 8 speed is the weapon of choice and braking is taken care of with a mechanical disc system. Admittedly, this isn’t as sharp as a hydraulic setup, but it’s pretty much par for the course at this price point.

We’re big fans of the CGR (that stands for “cross, gravel, road”) range from British bike brand Ribble. We recently featured the titanium Shimano GRX option as the best buy in our wider gravel bikes roundup. The CGR AL sport retains the same geometry and trademark versatility we loved about the titanium version but in a much more affordable aluminium package.

The CGR is designed to do it all. A quick wheel change and this thing can go from smashing its way through mud and techy, root-riddled woodland sections to keeping pace with roadie mates on the Saturday group ride. It comes equipped with Shimano Tiagra, which is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to budget groupsets and is famously durable and reliable, even in the less-than-perfect conditions you’ll undoubtedly find yourself in as a British cyclist.

The base E5 is the cheapest offering in Specialized’s award-winning diverge range, serving up the same progressive geometry as the top-tier options for a fraction of the price. It’s a great-looking bike that we were immediately drawn to and it offers a planted yet playful ride that goes above and beyond its modest price tag.

Spec-wise, you’ll be getting a Shimano Claris groupset, Tektro mechanical disc brakes, an E5 aluminium frame with neat internally-routed cables, and a carbon fork which takes the worst of the chatter out of the trail. Admittedly, it does come in at a fraction over £1,000, but in return for the extra cash, you’ll be getting the peace of mind that comes with buying from a name as respected and well established as Specialized.

When it comes to taking drop-bar bikes off-road, Kona is a brand with pedigree. The Canadian company started out in the mountain-bike scene in the mid-1980s, but upon venturing into cyclocross, its true calling became clear. Today Kona is known for creating versatile bikes that can take a pounding and the new rove AL is no exception.

This all-road adventure machine is the cheapest of the four bikes in the rove lineup, substituting steel for aluminium and using less extravagant components to keep it below that magic £1,000 mark. That said, it’s still a highly capable piece of kit, sporting Shimano Claris shifting, mechanical disc brakes and a 650b wheelset – the prevailing go-to size for gravel-bike wheels – although there is a 700c version available too if you prefer yours bigger.

Genesis’ cda 30 is not to dissimilar from the CDA 10 (£749.99, Freewheel.co.uk) we mentioned earlier. It has the same aluminium frame, steel fork and adaptable geometry, but with a few upgrades that improve the overall performance and ride quality. If you like the look of the CDA and can make your budget stretch that little bit further, it’s well worth the money to do so.

The big talking point here is the inclusion of Shimano’s GRX gravel-specific groupset (well, parts of it anyway) which isn’t commonly found on bikes in the sub-£1,000 category. Both the front and rear mechs and the crankset are from the GRX line of components, which has been specifically engineered to provide optimum performance off-road and in less than favourable conditions. We’ve used GRX a lot and it’s something worth having if you’re serious about your gravel rides.