Here at road.cc we like to think we’re well plugged in to the bike media rumour mill – it helps that we’re based in Bath and a fair chunk of the rest of the UK bike media is hereabouts too, including GCN – the Global Cycling Network. 

So what are we to make of these pics of GCN lead presenter Dan Lloyd, snapped by a road.cc reader up on the lanes above Bath?

He spotted Lloyd setting off for a ride not in his usual GCN team strip but going for the pro look in UCI WorldTour team Dimension Data for Qhubeka kit.

Fair dos, Dan is an ex-pro and still looks the part, but GCN run a notoriously tight ship when it comes to being on-brand on the company’s time. 

Put that together with the local rumour mill spinning furiously of late with talk of changes at GCN all linked to Lloyd and ‘something extraordinary,’ and maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Normally we’d assume he was about to jump ship to join the TDD for Qhubeka media team – but you don’t need to put in that sort of training for a media role, and the word from our snapper was that Lloyd was giving it the full warm up routine, presumably ahead of some serious miles. 

We’ve asked both GCN and Dan Lloyd for a comment on this, but so far neither have come back to us.