J.Guillem Atalaya Gravel

With exquisite attention to detail, understated looks and a cracking good ride on road, forest paths and gravel tracks, with space for wide tyres on 700C or 650B wheels, the new J.Guillem Atalaya Gravel is an enticing choice in the premium titanium gravel bike market.

• Pros: Attention to detail, smooth ride, handles well in the rough or smooth
• Cons: Bit pricier than some rivals, saddle

Ride and handling

Shaking down a rough bridleway, tyres scrabbling for grip on the dry dirt, before emerging back onto a country lane, all smiles and giggles, I'm won over by the J.Guillem Atalaya Gravel with its feeling of control and capability on a variety of terrain.

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That's the beauty of riding big tyre road bikes, of course, but not all gravel bikes are cut from the same cloth. With the Atalaya there's enough compliance to help it deal with everything from poorly surfaced country lanes to bridleways and forest tracks.

The geometry helps too. The high-speed stability is very impressive, whether that's on the road or a fast gravel track, but it still turns into corners positively and the WTB Riddler tyres bite throughout the turns. It doesn't have a point-and-shoot responsiveness when you turn up the intensity, but I didn't feel any serious lack of agility when pressed harder.

The ride quality is highly impressive, as good as any of the best titanium frames I've tested. It's compliant but still transmits a little feel through the contact points, and the steering is light and easy. Ride down a bumpy track and the Atalaya won't jolt and buck you about as if you were riding a wild bronco. It's composed and controlled.

Those 37mm WTB Riddler tyres offer a good combination of speed on hard surfaces, enough traction to deal with dry and loose or slightly damp trail conditions, and the ability to cope with mud until it reaches saturated bog levels. Some might prefer a slightly wider tyre, and the frame will take up to a 40mm if you wanted a bigger tyre for extra grip and traction. The WTBs struck a happy medium for the conditions of my local trails during the test period.

Where the Atalaya succeeds is being a really good all-rounder. It'll spend all day on the road, wafting from coffee stop to farm shop, with all the smoothness and comfort you expect from a titanium bike. Feel like untapping your adventurous spirit and it'll wrestle through forest trails, smash along fast gravel tracks and handle all the associated bumps and twists of rough stuffing.

Frame and technical highlights

J.Guillem founder Jan-Willem Sintnicolaas knows titanium (he also founded Van Nicholas many years ago) and it really shows in the Atalaya Gravel. This is no cookie cutter 3AL/2.5V titanium frame, it's oozing with unique details and stunning attention to detail.

The company specialises in titanium, which is probably more popular than it has ever been. It's still jolly expensive compared to aluminium or steel, but it's much more affordable than it used to be when it was a rare material in the 90s. It's lighter than steel, stronger than aluminium and arguably better looking than carbon, and it should last a lifetime.

What sets the Atalaya Gravel apart is the use of cast titanium to create a beautiful one-piece bottom bracket and chainstay yoke and the tapered head tube.

The former is designed to provide the necessary clearance for tyres and chainrings in this tightly packed area, the latter neatly incorporates the internal cable and hose routing, compatible with mechanical and electronic groupsets.

Between those junctions are carefully profiled main tubes with a hand-brushed finish and understated decals, including a hydroformed top tube and press-fit bottom bracket. There are also removable mudguard mounts for that versatility that makes gravel bikes so desirable.

As you'd probably expect, there are flat mount brake callipers, the rear smartly integrated into the dropout, with 12mm thru-axles at both ends.

The fork is made from carbon fibre and is J.Guillem's own design, with a clear emphasis on maximising tyre clearance. Both frame and fork will take up to 700x40mm wheels and tyres or the increasingly popular/curious 650Bx2.1in option: plenty of tyre choice to suit what you want from your gravel bike, your riding style and the terrain you're aiming to ride over. The test was conducted predominantly on 700C wheels with the supplied 38mm wide tyres.

Geometry

The Atalaya Gravel is available in just four sizes, which is limiting compared to other larger scale titanium bike brands: a choice of 52, 54, 56 and 58cm. The 56cm tested has a 394mm reach, 592mm stack, 1,025mm wheelbase, 70mm bottom bracket drop, 420mm chainstays and a 73.5-degree seat angle and 72-degree head angle.

Those numbers show that the bike has a little more handlebar height for a more relaxed position which gives you an advantage when descending steep tracks as your weight isn't pitched quite so severely over the front wheel. The wheelbase is closer to a cyclo-cross bike than some gravel bikes, while the bottom bracket drop and head angle are par for the course: lower and slacker as expected to give all-round handling balance on a multitude of terrain and tracks.

Pricing and parts

You can buy an Atalaya Gravel either as frame only (€1,999/£1,756) or frameset including the fork (€2,433/£2,137), or you can buy a complete bike such as the Shimano Ultegra-equipped bike tested. The J.Guillem website lets you configure the build to suit your wallet and tastes.

The Shimano Ultegra groupset was flawless: crisp gear changes and powerful brakes. But now for a familiar gripe: a compact 50/34t chainset is fine if you're riding flat gravel tracks and aim to be doing a lot of road riding, but for getting properly into the wilderness where hills can be steeper than anything you'll find on the road, a sub-compact chainset would be more suitable. The problem is, Shimano doesn't currently offer one, which means providing that option to the customer entails veering away from the Big S.

The price of the test bike had already been bumped up by the addition of Scope's new O2 carbon fibre wheels. With a low weight and wide carbon profile they give a good flick of speed when requested and are happy being pummelled down rocky descents.

The wheels were developed for gravel and cross-country mountain bikes, with a shallow and wide rim laced with a 2:1 spoke pattern to hubs with widely spaced flanges to increase the wheelset stiffness, a key aim in the development of the wheels.

The rims measure 25mm internally and use a hookless profile that is tubeless compatible, apparently developed in collaboration with Schwalbe. The spoke holes are reinforced using a manufacturing process that allows the wall thickness to be reduced, resulting in a claimed 1,380g weight, which is certainly on the light side.

Finishing kit

All the finishing kit is J.Guillem's own and includes the titanium seatpost using 3T's Difflock saddle clamp system, and a matching titanium seat clamp. It weighs a claimed 257g for its 320mm length and offers 15mm of setback.

The handlebar and stem are made from aluminium, with an understated black finish and small logos. The handlebar has a comfortable 128mm drop and the stem went about its business without fuss. You can upgrade to a titanium stem if you want.

My only gripe with the finishing kit was the saddle. I just didn't get on with the shape at all, so I swapped it for one I like. Saddles are a personal matter, though, and you might be fine on this one. Unfortunately, the online bike builder doesn't let you spec a different one.

Rivals

If you're shopping for a titanium frame with big tyre clearance for taking on rough roads and gravel riding, the Kinesis Tripster V2 has probably made it onto your shortlist. It's a credible rival, one of the benchmarks in this sector if Dave's glowing review is anything to go by.

> Buyer's Guide: 22 of the best gravel and adventure bikes

The Atalaya offers very similar performance, but its appearance and lovely details – particularly that bottom bracket and head tube – make it, for me, just a bit more desirable. And that is a key appeal of titanium: you're not buying titanium because it's cheap, but because it's highly desirable for its ride quality, longevity and appearance.

Conclusion

To sum up, the Atalaya is an extremely attractively produced titanium gravel bike with a few construction details we've not seen on any rival titanium bikes. It's an adventure and allroad bike fit for everything from road cruising to getting down and dirty in the woods, with just a change of tyres to suit the terrain. The handling is easy to live with and the smoothness helps deal with rough roads. Really, the only thing going against it is the price, which is a bit higher than some of the competition.

Verdict

Beautifully made and lovely riding titanium gravel bike