I am a (hypothetical) bikepacker

Back in 2020 I got a bit obsessed with bikepacking, which at the time still felt like a new-ish thing. If you’re not familiar with it, bikepacking is sort of supposed to be the younger, cooler sibling of cycle touring.

Hilariously, the main difference between the two is the type of luggage people use to carry things on their bike; if you’re using a rack and panniers you’re cycle touring, if you’re using soft bags mounted directly to various points on the bike itself it’s bikepacking¹.

At the root of my obsession was the fact that, due to the arrival of COVID in the UK, there was no way I could actually go bikepacking. Nothing is more appealing than the thing you can’t have though, right? So, in the tiny snippets of time which weren’t spent either in Zoom meetings or trying (failing) to get my kids to do some school work, I was dreaming of being able to load up my bike with camping equipment and head out into nature.

Just like lots of other people did during the pandemic, I tried to compensate for the lack of doing anything by instead spending money on the equipment I would need to go bikepacking once COVID had either disappeared or we’d got so bored of it that we decided to return to pre-COVID activities regardless. Obviously we chose the latter and I then immediately started using my newly-acquired bikepacking kit on a regular basis to enjoy nights under the stars.

Except, as the title of this post suggests, I didn’t.

I have been bikepacking precisely one time. It was a single overnight trip where I cycled around fifteen miles from home, found a comfy looking spot near the top of a local hill and crawled into my bivvy bag² for one of the worst nights’ sleep I’ve ever had, before doing the return journey the following morning. Even though the sleep was poor, overall I really enjoyed it.

Looking back at those photos I’m not really sure why I haven’t done it again, there are probably a load of contributors. Here are a few:

1. Time. Although some people seem to have more than twenty-four hours in their days, with Instagram feeds so packed full of activities that I begin to wonder whether they have a time machine at their disposal, I do not. I have a full time job and a family who all do their own activities, many of which require my input or facilitation

2. Anxiety. From thinking about going bikepacking to actually doing it for the one time I have took about two years. Even though I’m probably the sort of person who has the least to worry about when doing things like going out into a remote(ish) area alone, it definitely crossed my mind that I might get eaten/trampled by some curious wildlife (do rabbits eat people, given the opportunity? Who knows) or have a catastrophic accident which led to me writhing in pain at the bottom of a valley, unable to move. There’s also a bit of impostor syndrome at work here; while I’ve always loved the outdoors, I’ve never had any sort of training or real world guidance in doing anything beyond a day trip

3. People to do it with. During the pandemic I couldn’t have asked people to join me for my little trip, but even if I could have I don’t know anyone else who wants to. In fact, most of the people I mentioned it to afterwards gave me a look which was somewhere between pity and ridicule.

Really, I don’t think any of those reasons are good enough to actually prevent me from doing something about it (well, maybe the first one). So I’ve decided that in 2025 I’ll be recommencing my fledgling bikepacking hobby.

Leaving hypothetical behind

Fortunately I live near Bristol, which is quite a hotbed of bike-related activity. There are various groups and clubs, including one called Loop Bikepacking:

We’re a bike packing equipment rental service, with the aim of reducing barriers to entry of bikepacking, from both a cost and access perspective. - Loop Bikepacking, Instagram

As well as renting out equipment, they put on community bikepacking events, to help people who are unsure about it get out there. Some of these are for anyone, while some are specifically targeted to groups of people who are typically underrepresented in outdoor activities.

I’ve signed up for their first weekend trip of the year, which is at the end of this month. I’ve shuffled around our usual weekend commitments a bit to make it possible for me to go (Saturday mornings are usually a procession of children’s sporting activities), so a massive thanks to my wife for taking on a bit of extra childcare stuff.

I’m looking forward to it, though not without a little concern about the people aspect; I really enjoy meeting new people, but I am also quite socially awkward until I get to know people a bit.

The next step is deciding which bike to take; the trip is actually all on road so I’m leaning toward using the bike I commute on, though ironically this will mean packing my kit into panniers, so maybe I’ll actually be doing a very brief cycle tour rather than bikepacking?

Either way, it’s the getting out there which is important to me, and I’m really pleased that groups like Loop exist to make it more accessible for more people.

The bike I’ll probably be riding in April

1. This distinction is actually becoming less and less robust as time goes on. People who are bikepackers have realised that panniers are actually really quite good, and people who would traditionally have referred to themselves as cycle tourers will often add a soft bag or two to their bikes to supplement the storage their panniers provide.

2. A bivvy bag is essentially a posh, massive bin liner.