Fairlight Cycles Secan - new steel adventure bike coming soon

If you’ve been following Fairlight Cycles over on Instagram, makers of the Strael road bike that Stu gave such a glowing review to earlier this year, you’ll know it has been busy developing an all-new gravel and adventure bike.

It’s called the Secan and builds on DNA of the Strael in a number of ways with the aim to provide a bike for “fast byway adventures."

- Fairlight Cycles Strael 2.0

Dom Thomas, the designer at Fairlight (and who previously worked at Genesis and Wold Cycles) explains the concept of the Secan as a bike that is fully capable of exploring the countryside with little compromise and was born out of a lifetime riding the splendid Lincolnshire Wolds.

“The Lincolnshire Wolds is the place that I’ve ridden my bike the most.  It’s where I grew up and  I’m deeply attached to its landscape. The Wolds  is a pocket of chalk hills running  for  about 60 miles from the Humber to the Fens. It is a highly  agricultural landscape and  between  the rolling fields and wooded  out-crops there are hundreds of lanes, farm-tracks and bridleways,” explains Dom in a Lookbook released

“The Secan was inspired by this type of terrain. It is a bike where a landscape like the Wolds  (or the Chilterns, or the Downs) can be fully exploited and with little  compromise. The fit and  efficiency of your all-season road bike but with the ability to run large high volume treaded tyres (27.5 x 2.2” fit easily) to allow you to transition from road to off-road with speed and comfort.”

That gives a decent idea of what sort of riding the Secan is designed for, and it’s the sort of riding that is proving increasingly popular with road.cc readers. 

Like the Strael, the new Secan is made from Reynolds 853 custom tubes and features an ovalised top tube, Bentley x Fairlight 142x12mm flat mount dropouts, 68mm threaded bottom bracket, a new Cempa full carbon fork with tapered steerer tube, 3D printed external cable guides, mudguard and rack mounts, and three sets of bottle bosses.

Tyre clearance is ample for all your gravel and mixed terrain requirements, with space for 650 x 57mm or 700 x 47mm, decreasing when fitted with mudguards to  650×50mm or 700×42mm.

Like the Strael, the new Secan comes with the company’s proportional geometry which includes a regular and tall version of each frame size, to help you get the perfect fit.

- 19 of the best 2018 gravel & adventure bikes — super-versatile bikes that are at home on lanes, potholed streets and dirt roads

If you like the sound of all the new Secan, you can pick up a frameset for £1,099 with a Hope headset and seat clamp upgrade for £40. If you prefer a fully built bike, there will be three Shimano and two SRAM builds, priced from £2,099 for 105 or £2,299 for SRAM Rival 1x, rising to Ultegra Di2 for £3,399.

Dom will be paying us a visit next week with a bike so stay tuned for a closer look at this exciting new addition to the gravel and adventure bike market.

You can view many more photos of the bike in the lookbook available to download here  

More info at https://fairlightcycles.com/