As I write, I am on the way to Italy to be shown some new and exciting gravel bikes, or at least I hope they are both new and exciting. I’ll take new though, given my transit to and from Tuscany involves eight trains and a brace of flights.

Happily, on arrival at the second station on my journey, the magnificent Bristol Temple Meads, I spied locked up in the bike racks a fine example of not only the coolest bike genre there is – the dedicated winter bike – but perhaps the archetype of the breed, the magnificent (and discontinued) Ribble 7005.

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A blue Ribble audax bike locked up at a train station

Happy to still see someone flying the flag. (Image credit: Will Jones)

Continental Gator Hardshell tyres pumped up to half a million PSI.

The example below from Sam Marshall is a prime modern example. Alloy frame, plastic mudguards, sensible lighting, and good old reliable 11sp cable Shimano 105.

Many of them were the owner’s old road bike, slowly crumbling away, but the really cool ones were bought specifically with the intention of riding through the winter. They were never pretentious, there was rarely any real concession to performance, they were easy to maintain, and the focus was on reliability rather than speed. They were a statement of intent, rather than a begrudging resignation to the inevitable. As my best friend told me as I was staring down the barrel of my first winter of riding: “Nobody cares how fast or far you go when it’s raining sideways.”

They are cool precisely because they aren’t flash, and they were almost exclusively owned by The Hardest Rider You Know, which only adds to the mystique. You know the type; unassuming kit, unassuming bike, not on Instagram, uses phrases like ‘I’m not made of sugar’, drops everyone in all weathers in the saddle, refuels with a whole pot of strong tea. The polar opposite of the espresso drinking, Pas Normal Instagram rider.

This focus the winter bikes had on reliability even spawned their own events; the Reliability Ride. An early-season test of rider and machine to see whose bikes managed to make it through months of salt and water intact, and whose legs were reaping the rewards of endless filthy weekends in the saddle.

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smart trainer. With braking no longer an activity that slowly destroys your rims, there isn’t really a need to have a bike you’re happy to destroy anymore with grit and grime. Yes, the bearings still take a pounding, and there’s a high likelihood that you’re not servicing your freehub nearly enough, but at least now the physical integrity of your wheels is no longer a toll you need to pay each season.

You might think that the far superior braking on offer from discs would have actually increased the number of winter bikes out there, but the problem is that a half-decent bike is now so much more expensive than it used to be, and so even if it’s one’s old bike, the impetus to offer it up to the winter gods is greatly reduced.

This is further compounded by the boom in the ownership of gravel bikes, which themselves do make great winter machines with their bigger tyres, and the fact that mentally it’s easier to imagine them getting mucky. While they are no doubt very capable of putting in the hard yards over winter, they aren’t quite the same on the cool scale as the ol’ blue Ribble and its ilk, however.

Perhaps the main reason people no longer own winter bikes is simply that they don’t need them anymore. The popularity of Zwift and other indoor training platforms, combined with the reducing price of smart trainers, means that more and more people simply ride in their homes, in a virtual world instead, and in all likelihood get fitter and run a lower risk of crashing and general misery as a result.

waterproof cycling jacket or getting the winter cycling gloves out of the box under the stairs.