Genesis Croix De Fer 2017

This bike is probably the one bike I really miss the most and kind of regret selling it, it was a real work horse of a bike. A gravel bike before gravel bikes were cool. I built this bike up back in 2017 for one reason and one reason only, to cycle the entire British coastline, mainland Britain anyway. England, Scotland, and wales were my goal. No set timeframe, no day to day pre-planned route, just simply keep the sea to my left and pedal as far as I felt each day. Just under 5000 miles (ca. 8,047 km) I would need to cycle to return to my starting point, Bournemouth. So when choosing which bike I would use for this trip, I obviously wanted something bombproof. And it would turn out the Croix der Fer would indeed be bombproof. I first came across this bike in person when a good friend also had the same bike, so after riding with him one day, I was pretty set on the Croix der fer being the right bike for the job.

I would build this bike up myself from the frame and forks, I can’t remember the exact cost, but I believe it was between £300-£400, this was back in 2017 the current frameset of this bike sells for £850 direct from Genesis. At the time of building this bike 11 speed has just been released, so I built this up with mostly second hand 10 speed parts as everyone was selling their 10 speed parts to move to 11 speed. This meant I was able to build a pretty solid bike for a pretty good price. Now this was a while ago now so I can’t remember the cost of each individual part, but the entire bike was built for around £1k mark, a little under if I remember correctly. The Full build was as follows.

Frameset - 2017 Genesis Croix Der Fer (steel fork also) XL

Wheels - Front Reynolds Assault (SP Dynamo hub QR) Rear - Hope Pro 2 hub DT Swiss Allot rim (unsure exact model)

Tyres - Challenge Chicane 33mm handmade tyres (Not Tubeless)

Crankset - Tiagra 10s compact 50/34t 175mm

Shifters - 105 5700 10s

Front Mech - 105 10s

Rear Mech - 105 10s

Cassette - Tiagra 11/34

Chain - 105 10s (I think)

Pedals - Shimano m520

Brakes - TRP Spyre (cable)

Seat post - Ritchey WCS Aluminium

Stem - Ritchey WCS 110mm Aluminium

Handlebars - Bianchi Reparto course

Bar tape - Lizard Skin

Saddle - San Marco (unsure exact model) Cheap one

So as you can see, this bike was built up with a mixture of different parts, one thing I will say this bike was not light at all. In fact, one memory of this bike was pulling the frame out of the box and thinking Wow, that weighty. Actually it wasn’t so much the frame that surprised me with the weight, it was the fork, I didn’t have any and scales, but I could have sworn that the forks weighed as much as the forks. So although this bike weight a lot, probably 13-14KG was my estimate, it was incredibly comfortable. The steel frame and the 33 mm tyres, It would soak up the road vibration, making this an extremely comfortable bike to ride. With the easy gearing 34/34 I was able to get up every climb around the coast of Britain on this bike. Some climbs out of the little coves were steep too, 30% climbs happened often. A heavy bike obviously means you need to put more effort in to get up these climbs, however with the bike being loaded up with everything I needed for the 5000-mile journey it would a very stable bike. Sure, don’t get a bike like this if you want to keep high average speeds, though.

The build for this bike would last the entire trip, well nearly. I broke the rear mech after my tent pegs fell off my bike and landed in the derailleur, so it was replaced with a tiagra one to keep me going. The rear wheel would also be replaced. This was because I was hit by a car, my fault here. I had pedalled up a hill fast in a hard gear and then had to slow to pull out of a junction. I didn’t change into an easier gear before pulling out, and it was still on an incline, so I basically got stuck trying to pedal the bike. I guess the long days on the bike were catching up to me and I just lost focus. The rear rim would be bent as it got stuck under the pumper, but incredibly I didn’t get a puncture here. So after calling up a couple bike shops in the area, one would kindly stay open a little later so I could buy a new wheel.

This leads me on nicely to how solid of a frame this is. After being hit by a car, the frame had no signs of damage apart from a slightly bent mech hanger. The hanger is built into the frame so it can’t just be replaced but bent back into place. So that’s what I did to get it as aligned as possible. I’m never really sure where I stand with built-in hangers because on one hand when you have a frame for ages the removable hangers become impossible to find, but built in hangers you just need to bend them back. But if they do eventually break, it’s a potential frame right off. But anyway it would survive the crash and I never felt un easy about jumping back on this bike after the crash.

I want to mention the tyres that I chose for this bike, the Challenge Chicane 33 mm cycle cross tyre. I decided these because the tread pattern was perfect for fast loaded road riding, but still great if I needed to go off-road a little or use poorly surfaced cycle paths Etc. These tyres performed much better than I ever thought they would, and over the entire coast of Britain I had 4 punctures, one of which was an error on my part not removing a tyre after a flat. I was running tubes in these tyres, so I was even more impressed, tubeless was a thing back in 2017, but it was quite as common, so I didn’t want to faff around trying to get it to work. The rear tyre did eventually fail well it was worrying me, so I changed it just 100 miles (160.93 km) from the finish, as after the crash the tyre had a very slight tear in the side wall which was progressively getting bigger. So I changed that rear tyre for a Marathon plus. Just to get to the end of the ride.

I didn’t change the chain or cassette or chain rings over this 5000-mile journey and I rode these parts after this adventure for a further 2000 miles (ca. 3,219 km) before finally changing the chain rings chain and cassette. By that time they were extremely worn, but I got my money worth.

The only reason I decided to let this bike go was because I would get a good deal on the Sonder Camino, being similar bikes. It didn’t make sense to keep both, so I let the Croix de fer go. I do miss this bike, though. It’s one of them bikes that I do kind of regret selling. From the fit to the feel, this was just an excellent bike.

The video below is of the adventure around the coast of Britain, it’s not really that good, it was just put together with a bunch of clips that I randomly took for social media at the time. This was before my time of actively filming my adventures.