Best bike bag for the job
A lot of our tours take place outside the UK and unless you want to hire a bike, you’ll need to find a way to transport your trusted steed to the departure point. We’ll discuss taking trains and the merits of renting versus bringing your own bike in another blog. For now, let’s assume that you’re jumping on a plane and in need of a method to make sure your beloved bike is in one piece when it comes off the conveyor belt.
The soft-padded bag
These are pretty popular and to be honest I don’t know why. I think they are an accident waiting to happen and having had my only issue as a result of a bag like this, I am not in a hurry to use one again. With no firm padding, the bike is fairly loose in the bag and liable to move around a lot. Your no doubt well-intentioned luggage handler doesn’t know if hidden inside it is a £10k Pinarello or a 1980s knackered Peugeot, and if we’re being kind, it’s not really their job to care that much. It’ll get lobbed on the pile and with certain elements of the bike particularly exposed and brittle (such as your rear derailleur), you’d better hope that there’s a good bike shop open at the other end.
The hard-shell box
Turn up with one of these on a Brake the Cycle tour and we’ll immediately know you mean business. The choice of the pro cyclist, if an incident at the airport kicks off and you’re in need of safety, you could do worse than taking out the bicycle and shutting yourself inside one of these. Your bike will undoubtedly arrive in pristine condition if you’ve shelled out the money to give it the home it surely deserves. The downside is that they are expensive, and if you don’t have much storage at home then you’re going to struggle to find a place to stow it. We’d also find it hard ourselves if 15 of you turned up with these as we use a van as a support vehicle, not a Team Sky style battle bus.
The humble cardboard box
I’ll come out with it straight away, I think this one is the way to go and here’s why. Your friendly local bike shop (or national chain) receive the bikes that they then sell in cardboard boxes designed to perfectly fit them in. They then proceed to toss them out. You know where I’m going with this. A few weeks prior to your trip, check in with your nearest store and tell them that you’d like them to hold onto one for you, they’ll almost always say yes and it won’t cost you a penny. Voila, you have a safe way to pack your bike and there’s normally a few pockets of space where you can also stuff your panniers and other small bits, meaning that you can save on additional baggage. You’ll need to take off the front wheel, pedals, remove the saddle and twist and turn the handlebars to make it all fit. A more diligent example of how this is done can be viewed online here. Cardboard boxes are especially good when doing an tour where you end up in a different city, as you can discard it upon arrival and then find another one at the other end. At Brake the Cycle we always make sure to source boxes at the end so that you won’t have to end up cycling home after a long tour.
The humbler plastic bag
Now, you’re thinking that you know you can get ‘bags for life’ but surely they’re not tested to carry a bike safely at 40,000ft above sea. Not quite. Our wildcard entry though is the CTC plastic cycling bag, made of slightly tougher clear polyethene. ‘Clear’ is the key here, and why we think they’re worthy of a place in this list and not actually a bad choice. Putting your bike in one of these, transparent for all to see, is like one of those jedi mind tricks that says to the luggage handler ‘don’t you dare go mistreating my baby’. We’ve used these several times and suffice to say, have never had a single issue. At £12 it represents one of the more cost-effective options, though unlike the other options you won’t be able to load it up with the rest of your luggage - just the bike in this one.
Hope this helps, do get in touch if you need any more advise before coming on one of our tours. Tours you say? What tours? Well you can take a lookie here.
