BikeRadar Builds | George's Mason Bokeh gravel bike

What’s the perfect lockdown bike? It’s the one you’re permitted to ride, for starters, and the one you have readily available, but it’s also the bike that inspires you to pedal when times are hard and provides a dose of government-approved adventure when everyday life has become a bit, well, monotonous.

For me, that bike has been my Mason Bokeh, a loyal companion over the past couple of months of social distancing and the latest showpiece in our BikeRadar Builds series.

A build for all seasons

I bought this Bokeh frame about a year ago when living in London but, for one reason or another, didn’t get round to piecing together the rest of the spec until December.

I then closed out 2019 with a shakedown ride on New Year’s Eve after picking it up from my local bike shop, Strada Cycles, who put the build together here in south Bristol.

The Bokeh is Mason’s ‘Adventure Sport’ frame. That’s gravel, to you and me, but it’s an indication of where the Sussex-based brand founded by Dom Mason, formerly of Kinesis, pitches the Bokeh. It’s a frame designed for covering ground quickly, with a sportier overall geometry to match.

That’s what drew me to the Bokeh in the first place. I wanted an aluminium frame with a simple, elegant aesthetic, fixtures and fittings for bikepacking, touring or winter road riding, and geometry numbers at the sharper end of the gravel bike spectrum (my 54cm frame has a stack of 568mm and a reach of 376mm). The Bokeh may not be as geared up for properly technical off-road riding as some gravel frames, but its strength is its versatility.

Most ‘gravel’ riding in the UK will likely involve linking sections of trail and bridleway together by road, rather than heading out into the wild or spending all day on dirt. That’s certainly the case where I live, so building a bike that also felt at home on tarmac was key.

If it could double as a posh winter bike with mudguards, even better. A bike for all seasons and all occasions.

The frame is made in Italy from custom-formed, triple-butted Dedacciai tubing and is paired with Mason’s Parallax carbon fibre fork.

Claimed weights are 1,640g (52cm frame) and 465g (uncut fork) respectively – cast your mind back to Matthew’s recent Genesis CdF build and the weight savings over a steel frame are significant. I won’t dwell on the details – take a look through the galleries – but it’s a beautifully finished frame. And that orange!

In the time spent procrastinating between buying the frame and getting the build done, Mason actually released a second-edition Bokeh frame (we gave the original Bokeh five stars when we reviewed it in 2017).

The updates are pretty subtle, namely a beefier bottom bracket shell to accommodate a 30mm crank spindle, repositioned cable ports and a new fork – the Parallax 2 – with mounts on each leg and the option to fit an internally-routed dynamo.

GRX because… gravel

Mason offers the Bokeh in six builds, as a rolling chassis with an own-brand carbon seatpost and Hunt wheels, or as a frameset.

I’d initially planned to put an Ultegra Di2 groupset on my frame, but one benefit of stalling the build was the release of Shimano’s GRX gravel components, so GRX Di2 RX800 it was (RX800 sits at Ultegra-level and includes both mechanical and electronic options).

I’ve opted for a double chainset up front; sacrilege on a gravel bike, I know. I ride with quite a high cadence and, sensitive soul that I am, dislike big jumps between gears. That’s not so much of a problem when riding off-road – the popularity of 1x for mountain bikes, mine included, is evidence of that – but those extra few gears make all the difference on a bike likely to spend time on a variety of surfaces, so the front derailleur is present and correct.

The GRX RX810 2x chainset gets 48/31t chainrings (the more affordable RX600 2x chainset has 46/30t rings) and is paired with a 11-34t cassette.

Shimano’s gravel gearing is on the punchy side compared to SRAM’s new Force eTap AXS Wide components, which come with a 43/30t crank and 10-36t cassette, but it works well for my kind of riding.

I’ll likely look to add a few extra teeth to that cassette when riding the South Downs Way later this summer, though.

The Ultegra-level PD-A600 pedals are also from Shimano. The PD-A600 has been around for a long time (it’s now been superseded by the PD-ES600) and is a single-sided SPD with a wide body that provides plenty of support, like a road pedal, but with the mud-shedding qualities of a mountain bike pedal.

It’s light too (286g claimed weight), but scuffs up pretty bad, particularly after a handful of careless pedal strikes.

The wheels are a collaboration between Mason and Hunt, both based in Sussex. The Mason x Hunt 650b Adventure Sport Disc wheels have a 25mm internal width, a claimed weight of 1,594g and a £339 price tag – numbers that all make sense for an everyday gravel wheelset.

Tyre choice is always important but particularly so when it comes to a gravel build. 650b wheels make sense for ‘proper’ gravel tyres and I’ve been running 42mm WTB Resolutes, set up tubeless.

With our workshop currently closed, I don’t have a set of calipers to measure how they blow up on the Hunt rims, but they’re suitably voluminous.

The Resolute is a popular all-condition tyre at BikeRadar but, like anything that’s pitched as an all-rounder, there are concessions to be made in a tyre that’s good at a bit of everything.

The tread (tightly-packed knobs in the centre, chunkier on the outer edge) struggled in the slop of winter (it was a very wet winter in Bristol) but is impressive in most conditions, providing plenty of bite in loose dirt and rolling pretty well on the road.

I’ve recently suffered a couple of punctures on especially rocky trails from sidewall cuts that have failed to seal, but Dynaplug’s excellent tubeless repair kit has taken care of those.

As for the rest of the build, the finishing kit comes from PRO, with a Vibe Carbon seatpost, a PLT aluminium stem and a Discover bar, also aluminium. It’s the medium option with 12 degrees of Flare, (30 degrees of flare seems frankly excessive).

The handlebar has been one of the revelations of the builds, in the low-key way a handlebar could be. It’s extremely comfortable, with slightly flattened tops and a compact shape that makes it easy to hunker down in the drops. It’s a sensible weight (265g) and price (£44.99) too. Light, strong, cheap.

I’d originally put my favourite Fabric Scoop saddle on this bike but that’s since been swapped for the new short-nosed Line S. This is the titanium-railed option that sits in the middle of the range and very comfortable it is, too.

The Gripper cages also come from Fabric and are normally paired with their namesake bottles.

No Instagram-friendly gravel build is complete without a handlebar bag and this one from Restrap is ideal for day-long rides.

The Canister bag has a 1.5-litre capacity – enough space for plenty of snacks and spares (tools, that is, not spare snacks, though I’m always an advocate of the latter) – and hangs fuss-free off the handlebar, understated in appearance and easy to access. It’s made from a tough Cordura fabric and also has elasticated side pockets and a light loop.

Finishing things off is a Wahoo Elemnt Bolt computer (with its aero mount, because aero gravel should be a thing) and an old Bontrager Flare R rear light I’ve dug out. The Flare R was one of the original lights marketed for daytime use and it still works a treat.

Government-approved exploring

Anyway, why has this been my perfect lockdown bike? I moved from London to Bristol last summer to join the good ship BikeRadar and, with a new job and new city to get to grips with, didn’t get a whole lot of riding done through the second half of the year.

There’s nothing quite like a new bike to provide a shot in the arm, though. Like plenty of others, the coronavirus lockdown (and a long spell of unbroken sunshine that feels like it’s now lasted for months) also provided fresh incentive to get out on the bike for the little time we have been allowed to leave the house.

It’s been the perfect opportunity to explore the lanes, bridleways and trails that criss-cross the countryside surrounding the city. In this guise, the Bokeh is a bike capable of riding pretty much anything you’ll come across here, though I’m also planning to get a set of 700c road wheels with 30mm tyres for summer rides.

Over the last few months I’ve been following my nose, pinching other people’s rides, poring over maps and piecing together Strava/Komoot segments.

I’ve been on some cracking rides, many close to home on trails I never knew existed; some further afield now lockdown restrictions have started to ease. South to the Mendip Hills, north along the Severn estuary and, most recently, east to the Fosse Way – an old Roman road that offers mile upon mile of sweet, sweet gravel.

Just over 1,000 miles in and it’s been a lot of fun – for the first time in a couple of years, I’ve got real momentum to my riding.

While we might not have the network of proper gravel roads of, say, the US, the inherent versatility of a gravel bike makes it ideal for those rides that involve a little bit of everything. When you’ve got a whole new area to explore and group rides are off the table that’s exactly the bike you want. I can’t wait to do the same once we are allowed to ride together, too.

What’s next? I’d planned to ride the South Downs Way over two days with a group of friends in early May but that, of course, was postponed. We’ll try in September, hopefully, but in the meantime there’s plenty more to discover round these parts.