With so many genres and sub-genres of bikes out there, we thought we’d explain what the Stanforth Conway has been designed for. 

 

The Stanforth Conway is a sports tourer or performance tourer, designed for a cross-continent or shorter tour at pace. It has mounts for mudguards, bottle cages as well as front and rear racks to carry lightweight luggage.

 

The frame has been designed to fit 700c wheels with a tyre up to 35mm + mudguards or 43mm without. 

 

So it’s not a gravel bike? No. But like any good tourer should, it can deal with gravel. The mechanical TRP Spyre disc brakes provide strong braking when crossing loose gravel at speed. The tube diameters and gauges have been chosen to give the right balance between comfort, strength and stiffness.

 

The frame is hand built in England. It is fillet brazed using a mid-gauge of Reynolds 853, so a light but strong air hardened and heat treated steel. Mid-gauge means it’s still lighter than the 853 ATB tubing but stronger than the road 853 spec. It is designed for lighter weight baggage as opposed to fully loaded panniers – see Stanforth Bikes’ Skyelander or Kibo for loaded touring bikes.

 

The Stanforth Conway comes equipped with Shimano 105 STI’s, a 34-50 double chainset, along with a 11-34 cassette (a complete Ultegra transmission upgrade is an option, as is switching to a triple Tiagra groupset for lower gearing or a GRX groupset). The brakes are TRP Spyre discs, the wheels are hand built using DT Swiss R460 DB rims on Shimano RS505 32 hole centrelock disc hubs. Other components include Nitto heat treated drop bars, a Brooks Cambium C17 saddle and Marathon Racer 35mm tyres. For tours where you’ll be tackling loose gravel we also offer the Panaracer Gravel King 43mm as an option.

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