First ride review: Snowdon Paradox

The name of the first model released by Bristol's Snowdon Bikes is apt – the Paradox. It doesn't look it, but it'll take many a drop-bar carbon whippet to the cleaners. And your lower back will thank you.

Founder Tim Snowdon has partnered with Enigma Bicycle Works in the South Downs to deliver this UK-made titanium beauty. Several friends own Enigmas, and this outsourced frame is every inch up to the company's usual standards. What Snowdon brings to the party is insight into the customer's mind, and in my view he's nailed it.

> Buy this online here

Not everyone wants or needs drop bars. For some it's health reasons – maybe arm, shoulder or back issues prevent placing a lot of weight forward. Perhaps they want a more upright stance for dealing with traffic, or neck issues come to the fore with more bent-over positions. Maybe they just want to enjoy the view, or prefer thumb/grip shifters...

Because drop bars protrude much further forward, typically 60-70mm over a flat bar, a bike designed for them has to have a commensurately shorter top tube-stem length to maintain the same forward lean and to not handle like it's afloat. Fundamentally, you can't just bung a flat bar on a bike designed for drops and vice versa, and expect sensible results. You need something fit for purpose.

The Paradox answers all these needs, but with absolutely no compromise to the rarified air of the high-end titanium custom road bike build. Sublime weld quality aside, the smaller triangles and use of a large and subtly-bi-ovalised down tube and hourglass chainstays mean this is a bloody fast bike, period.

Own it

To get hold of a Paradox (frame only) you start by signing up to £1,850 of spend and then wait two to three months, as each is made to order. You can have pretty much any spec, from Shimano Di2 to SRAM 1X (tested) and everything in between, including triple chainsets.

For an extra £290 you can specify your own geometry, and for another £40 you can ask for rack/mudguard mounts in the place of your choosing. At the same time you can negotiate disc mounts (£undefined), but that will add weight. Likewise, you can go for matt or gloss logos instead of decals, but that will hit you a further £140.

So to fully load a Paradox frame you're looking at £2,320 (or more for discs).

But the important question is, how does it ride?

On the medium frame I tested the svelte 27.2mm carbon seatpost sat a whopping 25cm clear of the collar once set up right, meaning there was a ton of comfort on offer to soak up Hampshire Highway's worst. Technically I should have just been on a large, but that only adds 2cm to the seat tube, so there would still have been 230mm of carbon post sticking out to filter the road noise.

Snowdon recommends 28mm tyres as your limit, or 25mm if you want to fit full mudguards. The supplied 28mm Schwalbe Pro Ones (set up tubeless for this test) actually measure 30mm on the tested Prolite rims, with 2.5mm clearance either side at the chainstays, so you have about 35mm to play with. No, you'll not get a full mudguard installed if running a tyre that fat – I used the excellent SKS Raceblade Pro during the test to stay clean and dry. With 30mm of tubeless tyre underneath grip was never an issue, nor was there any trace of flex or inefficiency anywhere betwixt road and pedals/bar. Put bluntly, this is one of the snappiest bikes off the line I've ever ridden. Stomp>GO!

Flat-out fast

This is the first flat-bar bike I've reviewed through the prism of someone addicted to going fast in an aero position on drops. I must confess I thought I'd be concluding it would be nice for a nippy commute or for those with chronic back issues. After the first hour I realised I was being schooled in how not to underestimate based on cockpit arrangement – if you pull up to the lights or the start of a descent alongside a Paradox, more fool you if you think it's going to be an easy win.

Fundamentally it rides like what it is – a high-end titanium frame designed to offer relief from harsh road surfaces with its ample seatpost (think Giant TCR geometry), yet is stiff where it counts around the bottom bracket and chainstays to give the feeling of effortless acceleration.

The front end feels perfectly planted carving through fast corners, once you adjust to the feel of the flat bar and a stem probably a few inches shorter than what I'd usually run. Flat bars offer very limited hand positions, and on the test bike this wasn't helped by carbon-bling bar ends that were so slick as to be borderline risky on all but the smoothest of surfaces. But after a few hours and around 800m of fast descending I knew the handlebar arrangement wasn't holding me back.

Out in the North Hampshire Downs I equalled a five-year-standing personal best time on my go-to twisty singletrack road descent – 59 seconds at 54kph, besting times I've set on £5k disc-braked drop-bar carbon rocketsleds fitted with semi-compact chainsets. This matters because I'd pretty much run out of gears on the SRAM Force 1X 42T system and was in a tuck skimming the freshly-trimmed hedgerows.

The massively cowled rear dropouts mated to dead-straight seatstays provide a ton of rear-end stiffness, allowing you to fine-tune the feel of the bike by altering tyre pressure or model.

Comparing segments headed up, down or on the flat, the Paradox often had me close to or maybe only 5-10% behind my personal bests – most of which will have been set during Strava Sniping sessions, maybe while at the peak of training plans (which I am currently nowhere near), usually riding in optimal weather conditions or while drafting others.

> 12 of the loveliest titanium framed bikes

As any fule kno, Strava is utterly pointless except as a vanity mirror cum bike parts wear log, but for this purpose it represents a validation of what my heart was telling me: that the Snowdon Paradox is simply a bloody fast, light bike that will take a good thrashing while leaving you feeling refreshed.

Verdict

Upright, fast and comfortable – a very good flat-bar option, if you have the cash