Looking for a compromise between a £1000 Boardman SLR 8.9 road bike and a £125 Halfords Apollo MTB.

[cougie uk]

Aah ok. I know they put on a double chainset for me on their 1x Tempest but I'm old school. I hear some people in really hilly places so get on with the 1x.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

What you need is a good quality but fairly light old school steel framed rigid hybrid that will take a reasonably wide mixed use tyre like a Schwalbe Land Cruiser for the rougher bits.
Something like a Reynolds 501 framed Raleigh Pioneer, a 531 Raleigh Gemini (if you can find one!), a 500 framed Falcon Explorer, one of the Dawes "street" model hybrids or even an old cro-moly Trek 720 or similar.
None will be featherweights, but neither are they built like tanks, which is the downside of any Apollo MTB with suspension. I don't dislike the older Apollos, I do quite a lot of riding on mine, but its a 26" rigid with minimalist plastic MTB mudguards and no superfluous weight. it's as light as a cheapo Apollo ever will be, without the energy loss of suspension.

 

[Reynard]

The other option is to look for a nice used frame with rigid forks and move the good bits you've bought for the Apollo onto that.

You've obviously done a fair bit of tinkering keeping the Apollo going, so if you don't mind putting a bit of time in, you can build something that you like and that's unique to you. And the advantage to this, is that you can tailor it to exactly what you want the bike to be, rather than having to compromise one way or another.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

My Apollo weighs 22kg before I strap on my commuting stuff. The Boardman weighs 9kg.

The Carreras seem to average around 13kg.

What is it made out of, solid iron bars?

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

What is it made out of, solid iron bars?

Cheapo suspension MTB's can be horrendously heavy. Everything about them is crudely overbuilt from heavy materials. No engineering finesse whatsoever. It's one reason why I refuse to ride them, even if they are available FOC.
Cheap rigids are a little on the heavy side, cheap sus bikes are draggy boat anchors.

 

[Lovacott]

What is it made out of, solid iron bars?

Pretty much so.

 

[si_c]

Another vote for the Trek from me, my Dad has the same bike (albeit from 2018) and it's very good.

If buying from a local Trek dealer negotiate getting some mudguards included for the price.

 

[Lovacott]

Cheapo suspension MTB's can be horrendously heavy.

Although the road I travel to work on is pretty bad, my cycling skills have improved enough for me to know the best line to take on the road. I could do without the front shocks.

As it is, I have them locked as far as they will go to avoid some bounce when pedalling.

I never had any suspension on any bike when I was kid. I was in my mid thirties before I'd even tried one. Having used MTB's since, I've sort of gotten used to them, but since buying the road bike, I've realised how much slower an MTB is on a regular road.

My average speed on my commute is a tad over 10mph (an hours commute over very hilly terrain). I can do almost double the distance in the same time on the road bike over similar hills but better roads.

There is one decent bit of my commute where the road is pretty good and climbs about 100 feet over a mile. I can whizz along it on the road bike but I find it tediously slow on the MTB.

The one good thing that I do get from the MTB is a solid workout for my legs and lungs. It makes riding the road bike so much more pleasurable.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I never had any suspension on any bike when I was kid. I was in my mid thirties before I'd even tried one. Having used MTB's since, I've sort of gotten used to them, but since buying the road bike, I've realised how much slower an MTB is on a regular road.

My average speed on my commute is a tad over 10mph (an hours commute over very hilly terrain). I can do almost double the distance in the same time on the road bike over similar hills but better roads. -

Suspension didn't really exist on push bikes when I was growing up. They were all rigids, for road use or dirt. You either had something like a Raleigh Burner or Grifter, a Chopper, a DIY-built Tracker bike, or you rode a "racer" of varying price and quality. The MTB thing didn't really get going in the UK until the second half of the 80's, and the early ones were still all rigids anyway.

Knobbly tyred MTB's are considerably harder work, even without energy-sapping suspension. I can recall going for quite a long ride out in Bucks one afternoon in the late 90's, in the general area around Ivinghoe Beacon. My mate was on a half decent old lightweight racer he still had from when he was a teenager. I was riding a pretty basic 26" rigid Falcon MTB on knobbly tyres. Even with the gradient-friendly triple chainring I still had to work a lot harder than him to maintain a decent pace, and he did an office job not a manual one.
Around town, I only tend to average between 10 and 11 mph on an MTB, not that I'm trying to go fast.
I'm a couple of mph quicker for the same amount of effort if I'm riding my Raleigh Royal.

 

[Lovacott]

Suspension didn't really exist on push bikes when I was growing up. They were all rigids, for road use or dirt. You either had something like a Raleigh Burner or Grifter, a Chopper, a DIY-built Tracker bike, or you rode a "racer" of varying price and quality. The MTB thing didn't really get going in the UK until the second half of the 80's, and the early ones were still all rigids anyway.

Knobbly tyred MTB's are considerably harder work, even without energy-sapping suspension. I can recall going for quite a long ride out in Bucks one afternoon in the late 90's, in the general area around Ivinghoe Beacon. My mate was on a half decent old lightweight racer he still had from when he was a teenager. I was riding a pretty basic 26" rigid Falcon MTB on knobbly tyres. Even with the gradient-friendly triple chainring I still had to work a lot harder than him to maintain a decent pace, and he did an office job not a manual one.
Around town, I only tend to average between 10 and 11 mph on an MTB, not that I'm trying to go fast.
I'm a couple of mph quicker for the same amount of effort if I'm riding my Raleigh Royal.

I'm going to go for tyres with less drag next time around.

 

[Reynard]

I'm going to go for tyres with less drag next time around.

Something like a Schwalbe Road Cruiser commuter tyre should do the trick.

My (rigid) MTB is definitely very staid on tarmac (even running the above tyres), but take it on mud or gravel and it's a hoot. Mind, I don't tend to get anywhere terribly quickly, even on my road bike.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

My (rigid) MTB is definitely very staid on tarmac (even running the above tyres), but take it on mud or gravel and it's a hoot. Mind, I don't tend to get anywhere terribly quickly, even on my road bike.

Once I had grown out of tearing up and down a local road two or three abreast as a kid having a race and hoping we didn't encounter anything motorised coming the other way, I realised cycling isn't all about speed.
In fact it's one of the least important aspects, way behind having a good fitting and well adjusted machine, reasonably decent weather and a pleasant route to ride on.

 

[Reynard]

Once I had grown out of tearing up and down a local road two or three abreast as a kid having a race and hoping we didn't encounter anything motorised coming the other way, I realised cycling isn't all about speed.
In fact it's one of the least important aspects, way behind having a good fitting and well adjusted machine, reasonably decent weather and a pleasant route to ride on.

I rather enjoy simply bimbling - it's my usual modus operandi. In the autumn, I bimble *and* forage, as there are good places to stop and pick nuts and apples from the hedgerows. Whatever pace I cycle at is the right pace for me.

The only time I'll really put the welly in is if I'm tight on time and have to catch a train - although that's very much a non-issue right now.