Gravel Culture: The Service Course - Connection
Posted By Gravel Union
On 10 November 2020
When you’re sat at your desk each morning, motivation for work can be somewhat difficult to find sometimes. We can’t help with that, but we can do our best to inspire you with future gravel riding plans instead!
We see gravel riding as a metaphorical tool. It’s a mechanism for getting out and seeing the world, whether that world is what is on your doorstep, or whether that’s the world in the bigger picture version of things. But they’re more than that too – gravel bikes are an instigator of adventures and a propagator of friendship.
If you look at this image and it doesn’t instantly make you want to be there, staring at that view and soaking in the sights and sounds of a gravel bikepacking trip with a gravel soulmate through the mountainous territory of the French/Spanish Pyrenees, then we will eat our metaphorical hats!
The images and the beautiful video below, were put together by our friends at The Service Course and capture the adventures of former-pro road racer Svein Tuft and TSC co-founder Christian Meier as they bikepack through the stunning scenery close to Svein’s former home in Andorra, just before he packed up his life and his family and moved back to his native Canada.
Most gravel riders, we suspect, have friends that they grew up riding with, but over the course of time, life, love and family may have taken you to different places, even different parts of the world. Although normal friendships can be strained by such physical separation, bike friendships are somehow different. That shared passion for an activity mean the bonds of friendship seem to run somehow deeper and rekindling the relationship over a weekend adventure seems much easier that it might without a bike being involved.
It’s clear from watching the film how strong a connection Svein and Christian still have, despite their lives being so different after they retired from the pro-road race circuit. Loading up their gravel bikes with luggage and heading off into the mountains, despite the physical hardship their trip entails, seems like the ideal way to celebrate their friendship before the geography of their lives is changed once more.
Film: The Service Course & Matt Tomlinson
Photography: The Service Course & Tristan Cardew