[Closed] Bike packing newbie

That depends what you’re packing. The best advice is do a couple of local over-nighters before you go on a big trip to work out what you actually need to take (it’ll be less than you think). If you’re stopping in bothers and travelling in summer then all you really need is a summer quilt and a little food and water.

Yeah as above, your question is a bit ‘how long is a piece of string’
There’s no right or wrong answer, i use a hammock and want to carry all my stuff, including water.
Others may prefer a bivvy bag and be happy to drink from a stream.
But, you need to consider where you’re going to sleep,
What you’re going to eat/drink (varies, depending on length of trip)
What you’re going to wear (think about the weather)
How will you deal with a mechanical or injury
Will you need to cook? (Stove, or campfire, or chip shop, all equally valid)
Toilet facilities
Keeping ‘your arse’ clean, you don’t want any problems down there 50 miles from your destination eh.

Cycle touring is a very broad church. 🙂

As above.

Why is it bike packing attracts more "I want to start doing this, please tell me everything I need to know about it" questions?

Hi... Thanks for the response guys. Were planning on be self sufficient mostly as regards to the food side of things maybe grabbing cake when it pops up. lol. I've started to make a list of gear that I think would be required, I just wondering what size handle bar bags are best. I was looking at a rucksack and bar bag combo.

Self supporting for food - that adds a lot. Its the best part of a kilo of food per day per person to get the required calories - more if you don't have everything dehydrated.

I would much rather not have a rucsac on when bike riding. Frame bags are good - I have some off the shelf ones -ibera from amazon - good and cheap and a custom one from https://www.bike-bag.co.uk/

As always when touring its all a compromise about how much kit you take - compromise between weight and comfort.

I’m in a similar boat, planning for next year as I couldn’t get all the gear I need before winter. I’m using various small backpacks/day packs I own to judge sizing. You wouldn’t a 30 litre daypack hanging off your bars but equally my 5 litre fanny pack wouldn’t be big enough so going in the middle around 15l I think.
I haven’t owned a decent sleeping bag for around 10 years so what minimum warmth I will need for that is bigger problem!
Will be riding my enduro bike as well so I’m going to need a backpack so can just cram stuff in there. Going for a couple single night trips, sure I will soon know what I need to pack!
What are you planning on sleeping in? Sense tells me a bivvy bag will be best but I like the idea of a tarp, maybe the romanticism!

look at trekkertents - a hybrid of a fancy tarp and a tent - and lighter than a tarp and bivvy bag combo with added bugproofness

Its all about what compromises you prefer and how remote you are going. Decide what you want to do and then get the kit for that. Remote areas in Scotland in midge season - bug proof tent. Sleeping under a hedge near civilisation - a bivvy bag. 6g methsburner stove if all you are doing is heating a bit of water and don't care how long it takes or a proper stove and cookset if you are going to be cooking full meals and spend days on end in the mountains.

The more weight you carry the less fun the riding is - which is more important to you? - to be comfy when camped up or to keep the weight down to have more fun cycling

Check out the Bearbones forums https://bearbonesbikepacking.co.uk/phpBB3/index.php and associated review/blog page https://bearbonesbikepacking.blogspot.com/ for a (lot) more info. There's quite a few of us frequent both camps (sic).

Your two "enemies" when bikepacking are weight and bulk so while there are lots of items you'd like to take, practicalities mean they are best left at home. The problem is: light, compact, cheap - pick two! From the above blog - https://bearbonesbikepacking.blogspot.com/2016/08/tls-revolutionary-packing-system.html

Think about what you'd need for a single night out in summer as your base kit. While a bivy bag might seem the best, how do you get in and out when it's raining without getting everything inside the bag wet as well? A tarp gives you a bit of room to sort yourself out for maybe 500g extra including poles and pegs.

Sleeping bag - depends how warm or cold you sleep but something rated to 5C should be good enough for summer in England and Wales, might need a bit more in Scotland.

Take a water filter rather than masses of water - you only need a single water bottle.

Here's my Salsa Spearfish with bikepacking kit on this year's JennRide:

There's probably 12L or so of space in that setup. I've got tarp, sleeping quilt, mat, lightweight bivy bag along with stove, pan and enough for breakfast (ate out in the pub for the evening meal!) plus some spare clothing in that. There's also tools, spares, trail food, camera.

I posted my complete summer gear list on another bikepacking thread on here - came to just under 4.5kg including the various harnesses and bags. Can post it here again if you can't find it.

If you’re on an enduro bike and limiting yourself to a bar bag and rucksack then I’d go as light as poss to keep the riding fun. And low bulk is almost as important as low weight.

A down bag or quilt that’s no warmer than it needs to be, an inflatable mat (like a Neoair XLite) and a lightweight bivy bag is comfy and all you need if the weather’s fair. Eat at pubs and don’t take extra clothes, food or cooking kit.

Not so much kit but bivy spots. Have a ride around locally and try and find somewhere close to home (less than ten miles at most) that is reasonably sheltered and hidden from any habitation that you can use as a "test site". Being close to home means that you can make mistakes about kit (we've all made them) and refine things without being committed to a long ride. You can just use a rucksack for these rides until you get a feel for the size of bags you'll need.

The reason I say hidden is that the countryside is very dark at night and most people living there have done so for decades or all their life and any unusual lights stand out for miles.

First couple of trips just think about shelter. Eat a good meal at home then head to your bivy spot, put up tent/tarp/whatever and chill out, maybe take a hip flask of whisky. Take some snacks that can be eaten cold. In the morning head home and get breakfast.

Once home, go through what worked, what didn't. Did you use all your kit? If not did you take it "just in case"?, if so then you didn't really need it so there's no point in taking it next time.

Then look at cooking. There's a variety of stoves and fuel types ranging from recycled pop can alcohol stoves to £130 pressurised petrol stoves. All have their pros and cons. I go with the alcohol/meths stove. Certainly slower than other types but you are going to be in camp for eight hours or more, what's two minutes extra in getting a brew?

Like any activity it takes time to get a system that works for you, there's no real wrong or right and what's right in one situation might not be in another.

Generally once you get past trips that last a couple of nights the only real extra you need to think about is food and fuel for cooking. At Easter my wife and I did a four day trip in the highlands, I used the same bike as in the above shot but had an 8 litre dry bag on the bars rather than a 3L one. The extra kit was a warmer sleeping system and a few bits of extra clothing due to it being early season. The rest was extra food.

You're asking what size bags to buy. I just buy the largest of everything (saddle, bar, frame) and then I use whichever combination makes the most sense for each trip. That way I'm kitted out for short or long adventures.

I have a 13L drybag on my bars, attached with an alpkit kanga harness.
I use it for my sleeping bag, it’s unnoticeable weight wise.
I can also pack some food in there.

whitestone - I know you run really light but 4 days food in that kit? Were you eating like mice? 4 days food for 2 of us on our last trip was 5kgs!

My winter waterproofs are over a kilo, dry set of clothes? you make me feel like a right softy!

Alpkit stem cell is handy too, good size, plus it keeps weight close to the cog for easy steering.

Thanks for all the responses guys,you've given me a good starting point.

Try these, great quality and cheap

https://www.bikepack.pl/sklep/dt-evo-harness/?lang=en

tj - no! The kit pictured was for an overnighter, evening meal in pub with breakfast and brews on bike. The 4.4kg is for all the kit but no food, fuel or water. For the four days i.e. three nights trip I had a much bigger bag on the front, on the back I can't remember if I used the same dry bag (6L) as that pictured but properly filled up or a bigger (10L) one - I don't think I've a photo of the bike on that trip. It was the southern loop and a bit extra of the HT550, we went as far north as Cannich. We ate at the pizza place in Fort Augustus both on the way out (it was my birthday) and the way back but we carried our evening meals and breakfast.

I have a set of thermals for camp, they are kept only for that purpose even if I'm freezing on the bike - if it's going to be cold I'll take extra so as not to misuse my "pyjamas"! I'll also take a PHD down jacket, packs really small and only 170g. My touring kit includes an inflatable pillow - hardly soft 😋

OP: I'd look at separate harness and dry bags. Three big advantages: 1. you can pick the size of dry bag to match the amount of kit you want to take. 2. If the dry bag gets damaged then you just have to replace that, not the whole thing. 3. You can pack and unpack the bag in the dry then mount it to the bike, it's also easier to pack bags off the bike.

Avoid getting involved with rucksacks if you can, much more enjoyable to have your gear on the bike. As Whitestone says thermals for pj’s not to be used for anything else. Get out your sweaty gear as soon as you stop for the day. Few practice rides to see how you bags handle on the bike. It’s all a learning curve and personal preference, have fun.

I asked this question on facecloth a while ago. The answers that came back (from quite a few experienced riders) were in the range of 20 - 30 ltrs.

20 - 30 litres sounds a lot to me for UK summer. I suppose it depends on how good you are at packing, it's quite easy for two people to take the same pile of kit and get two completely different packed volumes. And of course what one person regards as sufficient kit to be comfy another will view as an affront to their civil liberties!

The danger/problem with having 20 or 30 litres of space is that it encourages the process of "I've got plenty of space so I'll just put this in.".

If I was riding somewhere like the deserts of the mid-west with no chance of supply for five or six days then I'd be ensuring I'd enough space for all my provisions. In the UK it's rare that you'll have to carry more than a couple of days' worth between resupply unless you were deliberately avoiding things for the sake of it.

I also do a lot of camping (bikepacking and otherwise) so for me buying quality light and compact kit makes sense as I'll get the use out of it and means that for a given set of conditions I'll likely have lighter and smaller kit than many. If you only go out a handful of nights per year then a £200 sleeping bag isn't really good use of your money.

Very much linked to the luggage situation - is there a preferred choice of evening footwear? Assuming your shoes have had a soaking but you might be walking around at night. Camping slippers generally seem too flimsy, sliders/flip-flops possibly not warm enough...

I never take any other shoes - another pair ( like my trekking sandels) are a kilo! Goretex socks I do have tho for warm dry feet in cold wet shoes.

We have our backpacking kit down to 14 kg for two of us ( including clothes but not food). I could lose a kilo by loosing a bit of comfort ( chairs 150g apiece, tent underlay 300g extra) I just do not know where I could lose enough to get down to whitestones weight!

I posted this on another thread, but I reckon it's better to spend your money on light, compact kit than on bike-specific luggage. The smaller and lighter you go, the easier it is to manage with a small rucksack.

Water is (relatively) heavy. Even getting that, and some tools/spares on the bike in a normal saddle bag will ease the load on your back.

For longer trips, luggage comes into its own, but maybe work up to that once you've refined your kit list and then you won't end up buying too much.

I've never weighed out all my kit but I have weighed a couple of packed bikes. My (previous) fatbike for a one night trip (Inc 1.5l of water) was 18Kg.

I'm also a fan of Goretex socks. For short trips I don't bother with any other shoes or boots. I have a pair of very lightweight, foam-soled "deck" shoes I bought from M&S that I'll take if I'm in touring mode and might want to walk to the pub though.

Crocs for extra shoes? Nice and light?

Evening shoes - I generally don't bother, pour out any water and get them as dry as possible then dry your feet and put a dry pair of socks on. The socks will get wet but won't be too bad. If it's raining then a spare pair of shoes is just going to get wet anyway.

tj - my overnighter kit list is in this thread - https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/help-with-lowest-bike-packing-gear-ratios-for-bikepacking/ using a tarp not a tent. Our tent split between us would add an effective 325g to that total. That list was used on the August BH weekend which was pretty warm (even in Yorkshire). I think I took 150ml of meths, enough to make a couple of brews and porridge in the morning. Looking at the shots of my bike it looks like I got it all into 9L or thereabouts of bags: 6L saddle bag; 1L top tube bag; 2 x 1L stem cells (one of which was actually used for trail food).

Ta whitestone - its was more rhetorical than a real question.

tj - I leave the rhetoric at home - weighs too much!

@ifindoubtflatout - there's a thread on how to pack over on Bearbones at the mo. Well it's more a "this is how I do it" sort of thread but should give you some ideas. Some shots of various setups of mine:

A closer shot of what I used on the JennRide (overnighter, summer)

An overnighter in the Dales, both my bike and my wife's

Three day tour in the Dales (summer, carrying food)

Racing the French Divide, should have been twelve days (summer)

Spearfish setup on the HT550 (summer)

Wild about Argyll trail in early April

Northumberland at xmas 2017! We did stop in bothies on this trip but had a tarp just in case.

@whitestone..... Thanks for the info. I will have a peruse at Bearbones this evening.

I hate to say this...but you are all over thinking it. Just strap a sleeping bag and some stuff to your bike and go. It will probably be a nightmare but you will never stop wanting to go again. Everything goes wrong when bike packing and that is half the fun.