Off to South Africa soon and have entered the Cape Argus Tour, a 110km road ride aound the cape.

Was hoping to Hire/Beg/Borrow a road bike for the event but I’m struggling to sort out a bike so I having to think about plan B- taking my bike from the UK.

I’ve never flown with a bike before (although I will be going Mont Ventoux for the Tour in the summer so will be flying/Eurostarring again)

Any advice on fling with a bike? I remember reading that soft bags are better as the hard cases are really expensive and heavy. Also unsure whether to hire a bag from a shop or if it would be cheaper to buy a soft bag.

I’d be grateful if anyone has any particular brands of bag to racommend (or avoid!) and any tips for packing the bike to ensure it gets there and back in one piece. If anyone knows of a shop in the Cheshire/Manchester area who hires bags (or if anyone has a bag to sell in the area) than that’d be a great help as well.

Followed these intructions twice with no broblems

The only couple of things I’d add to that list are:

Remove the discs from the wheels as no amount of padding will stop them getting taco’d if the baggage handlers place something on top (which they do alarmingly frequently).

Don’t let all the air out of your tyres – it’ll offer a little protection to your wheels should the bag get dropped.

I’ve used on of the CRC / Neil Pride bags for the last 3 years and it’s been really good. Plenty of room and tough enough to keep the bike safe. IIRC they were about £65 from CRC which is pretty good value.

Cheers guys. Some great advice. It’s a road bike so no disks to worry about. I guess The only risks will be the drop bars and STI levers which may be a lttle vunerable. I’m guessing the carbon frame will be less sturdy to knocks that an mtb frame would be.

I’ll need to up the bubble wrap!

Does anyone know how much shops charge to hire bags? Can you hire soft bags as well?

I’ve never heard of a shop that hired bags – though you’d think there’d be money in it £60 bag, hire out at say £20 a week?

You can hire mine if you want. £15 week + post.

I’d take the Shifters and rear derailleur off just to be safe. Bars can take some knocks without a real worry but shifters don’t like the abuse.

Sorry, that wasn’t meant to look like a trade ad. I’m not soliciting for business. Promise!

Thanks for the offer IWH. I’m guessing that if it’s a padded bag and It’ll be pretty costly to post. The fact I’ll need it for 2 weeks this time and I’ll need another one for a week in the summer means it might make more sense to buy one, unless I can borrow or hire one locally.

I’ve hired a box from my LBS for transporting my road bike. Cost me £15 for ten days. I’ve used a padded bag with a cardboard box inside it for the MTB several times but felt that the carbon road frame might not stand up to baggage handlers.

Altringham?

http://www.bikeshak.co.uk/index.php

Scroll down – bottom right

No Worries Mefster. Definitely worth looking at CRC if you’re going to be using one often. IIRC Merlin did their own version as well.

/edit/

The Merlin bag

Uplink- thanks for that. Bikeshak is my local shop but didn’t get chance to call in before closing today. I had had a good route around their website (I could recall them mentioning boxes before) but didn’t spot it tucked so far down in the bottom right corner.

Merlin bag does look like a good option- seems like quite a rugged bag for a good price- will likely be cheaper in the long run and maybe lighter.

Decided to opt for a soft bag so popped to Evans after work to buy their Pinnicle bike bag. Looks the same as the Neil Pryce/Tifosi bags so hopefully will be up to the task. Need to get to B&Q for some foam lagging now!

Have had 2 bikes comprehensivley munched in bags – to be fair i flay a lot with my bikes but one was so totally destroyed and the other was fairly mangled. Both were well packed and in bags reinforced with corflute, mechs off etc – they just both seemed to have been dragged and/or at the bottom of a very heavy pile of gear. I bought a box and while expensive its paid for itself 10 times over as i don;t worry about my bike now – esp my road bikes.

Usually use a box with pip elagging around frame and clothes to pack out the spaces.

More recently i’ve used a simple bag over the cardboard box… basically, you can’t beat cardboard for the money.
bags for sale here

Bought my CR1 carbon road bike last time I went home.. alng with my Blizzard frame – all in the same bag.. not a problem or a concern.