LAST UPDATED 31ST JANUARY 2019
What a beautiful bicycle!
Fast on tarmac, comfortable and capable on dirt, the Glencoe is Whyte’s brand new go-anywhere bike. One ride and you’ll understand why Whyte are trumpeting the Glencoe as ‘the best all round road bike we have ever made’.
That’s some claim when you consider that another Whyte bike, the Wessex, has already picked up two road.cc awards in 2017: One for Endurance/Sportive Road Bike of the Year and the second for Commuter Bike of the Year. Mountain bikes Whyte make are also exceptional so are worth checking out.
ROAD PLUS ADVENTURE
To create the Glencoe, Whyte have taken some of the best elements of the Wessex – the 1×11 drivetrain, the thru-axle wheels and the wide road bike tyres – then built on that design to create a style of bike, which they describe as Road Plus Adventure.
650B X 47 TYRES
This Road Plus Adventure bike is defined by its plus-sized WTB 650b x 47 tyres (cf the Wessex’s 30mm wide treads).
Being 47mm wide, you can be confident that the Glencoe’s tyres will roll over kerbs, potholes and cobbles with hardly a care.
But here’s the clever bit – the tyre’s rolling circumference (where it makes contact with the road) is no greater than an equivalent 700×28 tyre. This helps explain why properly made, lightweight, folding bead, plus-size road tyres aren’t just more comfortable and compliant: they can also be at least as fast as skinny tyres – more on this.
To make them even more perfect the Glencoe’s tyres and wheel rims are tubeless ready. Read article: Why ride tubeless?
Finally, it does the bike no harm that the tyres’ tan sidewalls help make the Glencoe such a head turner of a bike.
1×11 DRIVETRAIN
If you’re used to relying on a double or triple chainset to ensure your bike has a wide enough spread of gears – low enough for the steepest climbs, high enough so you never spin out – you might be dubious about the benefits of a single chainring drivetrain on a road bike.
We can assure you that with its 44t chainring and its 11-42 cassette the Glencoe offers a very respectable range (28 to 103 if you think in gear inches) with the additional bonus of single shifter simplicity, along with the certainty that every one of the 11 gears will be usable without any overlap. More on the benefits of one-by.
UK-PROOF MUDGUARD-COMPATIBLE DESIGN
Being a Whyte, the Glencoe is built to survive the worst weather condition, so it features fully enclosed internal-routed cables, and abundant tyre clearance for the Glencoe mudguards, which Whyte are launching this summer.
MORE WALLET FRIENDLY
Even though it shares many of its features, being built on an alloy frame rather than carbon, the Glencoe costs around £1,000 less than the Whyte Wessex.
Rest assured that the Glencoe frame remains a beauty, built on the custom gauge 6061 hydroformed T6 aluminium tubing that has served Whyte so well for the production of over 90% of the multi-award winning bikes they have built since 2000.
SUMMARY
Do you want a beautiful looking bike that’s capable of anything this side of full-on road racing or mountain biking?
Do you want a bike that embraces this decade’s best cycling innovations, from more logical wide range one-by gearing to tyres that are fast and forgiving?
Do you want a bike that’s equally capable for commutes, sportives, touring, fitness rides and adventure?
Then do yourself a favour and check out the Whyte Glencoe instore (except Canonmills) or online.