Bike travel bags

Luggage that travels with your bike

When you travel with your bike in a travel bag, there’s still everything else to pack: helmet, shoes, spare wheels, tools and a week’s worth of clothes. These bags are made for it — generous capacities, materials that stand up to an aircraft hold and a van floor, and openings that give you access to everything at once rather than just from the top.

The models

• 24 to 60 L duffel : the versatile size, carried by hand or over the shoulder and easily squeezed into a boot. Welded-tarpaulin versions are completely waterproof and can be hosed down.
• 100 to 125 L wheeled travel bag : for a week’s worth of kit or one rider’s equipment. You can wheel it through the airport alongside your bike travel bag.
• 35 to 60 L travel backpack : when you need your hands free, or when the bag doubles as cabin luggage.
• Wash bags : accessories in their own right here, designed to hang in a campsite or campervan bathroom.

What really matters

Theopening first: a bag that opens along its full length saves you emptying it to find a shoe. Then the material — welded tarpaulin is easy to clean and hard-wearing, while technical fabric is lighter and more breathable. Finally, the empty weight, which matters as soon as an airline weighs it, plus separate compartments to keep wet or dirty kit apart after a ride.

Alongside a bike travel bag

The classic pairing is a travel bag for the bike and a duffel for everything else. Think about how you split your kit: fragile parts and tools travel better secured inside the bike bag, around the frame, than at the bottom of a bag in the hold. And keep anything you’d need to ride if your checked bag went missing in your cabin luggage — cycling shorts, shoes, pedals and bike computer.

See also: Bike travel bags · Panniers · Backpacks and hydration packs