France's Cyclik is now making bamboo gravel bikes which, like its other bikes, are custom made from material grown in the country.
We've featured bamboo bikes on road.cc several times in the past – and Dave even made one – but this could be the first bamboo gravel bike that we've featured.
Based in Lyon, Cyclik uses bamboo to make custom bike frames for various different types of riding. As a former high-level cyclist, Félix Hebert wanted to make a bike able to compete with carbon in terms of stiffness and he says that bamboo is able to absorb vibration thanks to its fibrous and tubular structure.
He also wanted to make custom frames in France from plant material grown in the country as a counterpoint to all of the mass produced carbon frames from the Far East.
"Bamboo tubes are selected according to very strict specifications," says Félix. "In partnership with the Bambouseraie d'Anduze (a botanical garden between Nîmes and Montpellier in southern France) we have chosen a kind of bamboo ideal for the manufacture of bicycles.
"We have chosen it according to several criteria – diameter, thickness, aesthetic appearance, and so on. In order to have the best possible tubes, we select them one by one in the Bambouseraie. Drying takes place in the Loire by a sawmill specialising in the drying of wood and exotic materials."
The joints are made with an epoxy-coated linen braiding to ensure strength, stiffness and durability.
"All the bikes we manufacture are made to measure according to the desires of customers," says Félix. "We specialise in making unique bikes to meet the expectations of cyclists looking for something perfectly adapted to their riding (long trek, triathlon, travels or gravel). Each frame requires more than 50 hours of work."
A frame weighs around 2.3kg (5lb).
The pictures shown here feature a disc brake bike built up with a SRAM Apex 1X groupset and 30mm tubeless tyres for road and all-road use.
Complete bikes cost from €4,500 (around £4,095).
Head over to Cyclik's website for more info.
Mat has worked for loads of bike magazines over 20+ years, and been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus. He's been road.cc technical editor for eight years, testing bikes, fettling the latest kit, and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing. We send him off around the world to get all the news from launches and shows too. He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run. Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism, and he is a past winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer.