Bikepacking

Bikepacking is riding a bicycle somewhere far enough that you sleep on the way. That is the whole definition, and everything else — the bags, the routes, the arguments about tyre width — follows from the constraint that you are carrying your accommodation up every hill.

It splits mainly by surface and by how much you carry. Road touring on tarmac with panniers is the oldest form and still the most comfortable, and it opens up distances the others do not. Off-road bikepacking on gravel, bridleways and trails is what the modern word usually means: soft bags strapped to the frame rather than racks, lighter loads, rougher ground. Credit-card touring carries almost nothing and stays in accommodation, which is a genuine version rather than a compromise. Ultra-distance racing is a small, intense corner of the sport where people ride enormous routes largely without sleeping, and it is a different activity wearing the same bags.

The thing beginners consistently get wrong is scale. A first trip does not need to be ambitious to be good, and the failure mode is almost never fitness — it is discovering at nine in the evening that the sleeping mat is uncomfortable, the stove does not work and there is nowhere legal to camp. One night, close to home, on a route with escape options, teaches all of that at the cost of an evening.

Start with

One night, near homeThe overnighter is the single most useful trip in the hobby.

What actually limits you

Weight, then daylight

Bike required

The one you ownTyre clearance matters more than the frame.

The legal question

Where you may sleepAnd it differs by nation, sharply.

1. 1

   Step 1: Do an overnighter fifteen miles from home

   Ride out in the afternoon, sleep, ride back for breakfast. This is not a training exercise for a real trip — it is the trip, in miniature, and it surfaces every equipment and comfort problem you have while you are still close enough to walk home.

   You will know it worked when: You know what is missing before it matters.

2. 2

   Step 2: Load the bike you already own

   Strap a dry bag to the bars and another to the saddle rails. It will not be elegant and it will work. Buying bags before you know how you pack is how people end up with a frame bag that fits nothing they carry.

   You will know it worked when: A loaded bike, at no cost, this weekend.

3. 3

   Step 3: Ride the loaded bike before you go anywhere

   A loaded bike steers differently, brakes later and behaves oddly at low speed. Ten miles around home with the full load tells you whether the weight is in the wrong place, which is almost always too high and too far forward.

   You will know it worked when: No surprises at the first junction.

4. 4

   Step 4: Plan around water, food and daylight rather than distance

   Distance is the number people plan with and the least useful one. Where you can refill water, where you can buy food on a Sunday evening, and what time it gets dark are what actually shape a day. Fifty kilometres on a loaded bike off-road is a full day; the same on tarmac is a morning.

   You will know it worked when: A plan that survives contact with the route.

5. 5

   Step 5: Settle the sleeping question properly

   Campsite, hostel, or wild camping — and the last is a legal question with different answers in different parts of Britain. Decide before you leave rather than at dusk, because the version of this decision made at dusk is always worse.

   You will know it worked when: Somewhere to sleep that you are entitled to be.

6. 6

   Step 6: Then go somewhere that needs a train

   Once the overnighter is boring, the constraint stops being equipment and starts being imagination. Book a train, ride away from the station, and come back from a different one.

   You will know it worked when: The trip that makes the hobby stick.

1. 1

   Step 1: The local overnighter, repeated

   The same trip a few times, changing one thing each go. Boring, and it is how the kit gets sorted.

   You will know it worked when: A setup you stop thinking about.

2. 2

   Step 2: A long weekend on a waymarked route

   Three days on something like a national trail or a canal route, where navigation is easy and the challenge is consecutive days.

   You will know it worked when: You learn what your body does on day three.

3. 3

   Step 3: Off-road and self-navigated

   Bridleways, gravel and a route you plotted. Slower, more absorbing, and where the hobby stops resembling cycling.

   You will know it worked when: Route-finding, surface judgement and real remoteness.

4. 4

   Step 4: A week or more, or abroad

   Logistics become the skill — flights, trains, bike boxes, resupply across a fortnight. A different kind of planning entirely.

   You will know it worked when: The trip you talk about for years.

5. 5

   Step 5: Ultra-distance events, if that appeals

   Self-supported races over enormous routes with minimal sleep. A small and intense corner of the sport, and genuinely not what most bikepackers want.

   You will know it worked when: A direction, for a certain kind of person.

• Bags before bike, always — A saddle pack, a frame bag and a handlebar roll will fit almost any bicycle and cost a fraction of a new one. The bike you own is nearly always adequate; the bags you do not own are the actual gap.
• Panniers versus soft bags — Panniers carry more, load lower, and are far easier to pack and unpack — they are better for tarmac and for anybody who values comfort. Soft strapped bags are lighter, quieter and survive rough ground where a rack can break. This is a genuine trade rather than an upgrade path.
• Sleep system — Bag, mat and shelter, in that order of importance to how the night goes. A cold sleeper on a thin mat will be miserable in an expensive tent; the mat is the item beginners under-buy most consistently.
• Shelter — Tent, tarp or bivvy. A bivvy is lightest and least pleasant in rain; a tarp is versatile and takes practice; a small tent is heaviest and the one that makes a wet evening survivable. Start with whatever you already own.
• Cooking, or not — A stove is a pleasure and it is optional. Cold food for one night is entirely reasonable and removes fuel, ignition and washing up from the first trip.
• Spares that matter — Tubes, a pump, a multitool, a chain link, a spare set of lights and a way to charge a phone. On a multi-day trip the failure that ends the trip is nearly always the one you had no part for.
• What to leave behind — A second set of clothes, a book, a chair, anything "just in case" that weighs more than a hundred grams. Weight is the whole constraint and it is invisible on the kitchen floor.

Two separate questions, and the answer to each is set where you are riding rather than by anything general about the activity. Riding access and overnight access are governed by different rules, often by different bodies, and a country that is permissive about one is not necessarily permissive about the other.

The pattern worth carrying is that overnight access falls into a small number of shapes. It may be a public right you already hold; it may be permitted on land a public agency manages, under that agency’s conditions; it may need a permit; it may be restricted to designated campsites; or it may rest entirely on the landowner’s permission. Which shape applies is the single thing to establish before a trip, and it is usually answered on the website of whoever manages the ground.

Two examples of how far apart the arrangements sit — illustrations, not a survey, and neither is the world’s rule. In Scotland a statutory right of responsible access covers most land and inland water and extends to lightweight camping; it is conditional on behaving responsibly and is qualified by local byelaws and seasonal restrictions. On public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management in the United States there is no such public right, and dispersed camping is instead broadly allowed unless an area is posted closed, generally for up to fourteen days in any twenty-eight, with the detail set by state and field office rather than nationally.

A public right you already hold, and a permission granted by whoever manages the ground: two different mechanisms producing a superficially similar freedom. That is why the question to ask is not whether wild camping is legal, but who decides here.

• Riding access and walking access are different questions — A route you may walk is not automatically a route you may ride, and the distinction exists in most jurisdictions in some form. Establish it from the map or the land manager rather than from the presence of a path.
• Lighting is a legal duty almost everywhere, and the specifics are local — Multi-day trips involve riding at dusk far more often than day rides do, and most road-traffic codes require lights after dark. Find out what your jurisdiction requires, and carry a spare set regardless — a dead light two days from home is a stop, not an inconvenience.
• Leave no trace is the condition, not the courtesy — Arrive late, leave early, one tent, no fire, and take everything out including the things that were there when you arrived. Where access is a right it is usually a right conditional on exactly this behaviour; where it is a tolerance, this is what keeps the tolerance alive.
• Trains and buses carry bikes on their own terms — Reservations, quotas and outright bans vary by operator and by individual service almost everywhere, and a full bike space is a stranded rider. Check and book when you book the ticket, not at the platform.

Bikepacking is not a dangerous activity, and its risks are the ordinary ones of riding and of being outdoors overnight — concentrated by distance from help and by tiredness. The things that go wrong are dull, which is why they are worth planning for.

• Tiredness is the underrated one — Judgement degrades over consecutive days, and the classic bikepacking incident is a rider making a poor road decision on the afternoon of day three. Plan shorter days than you can ride.
• Getting cold and wet at the end of a day — Riding generates a great deal of heat and stopping removes it very quickly. Dry clothing that never gets ridden in, kept in a dry bag, is the single most useful safety item on the list. In a wet wind, hypothermia is a summer risk on an exposed hill as much as a winter one.
• Riding loaded on roads — Larger margins than you would take unloaded, particularly at junctions and on descents. Why the bike behaves that way, and how to pack so it behaves better, is under trip problems below.
• Being alone somewhere without signal — Tell somebody your route and your expected return, the same discipline as a hill day and for the same reason. Mobile coverage in the places worth riding to is patchy by definition.
• Water — Refill points are a planning problem anywhere the map is emptier than the road network suggests. Carrying capacity for a dry stretch matters more than carrying capacity generally, and treating water from a stream is a decision to make deliberately rather than at the point of thirst.

Bikepacking covers everything from one night out to riding across a continent, and the useful distinctions are terrain, self-sufficiency and whether the clock matters. Almost all published gear advice is written for one combination of those three, which is why it appears to contradict itself.

• The overnighter — Out after work, one night, home the next morning. The single best way to start, because the consequences of getting the kit wrong are one uncomfortable night rather than a ruined week.
• Credit-card touring — Riding between accommodation, carrying almost nothing. Frequently sneered at and entirely legitimate: it removes the heaviest kit and lets you cover ground, and it is a good route in for people not ready to camp.
• Off-road bikepacking — Trails, bridleways and gravel, with soft luggage strapped to the frame rather than racks and panniers. The style the modern word usually means, and the one where tyre choice and bike fit matter most.
• Road touring — Surfaced roads, racks and panniers, more weight carried more comfortably. Better for long distances with a lot of kit, and much easier on a body that dislikes rough ground.
• Expedition touring — Months rather than days, remote regions, and a bike chosen for repairability over speed. Logistics and self-reliance become the sport.
• Ultra-distance racing — Self-supported races over hundreds or thousands of kilometres against a clock. A demanding minority pursuit with a strong culture, and the branch where sleep management is a real skill.

Where to start

A local overnighterOne night, close to home, on the bike you own. Everything else is a variation on it.

What decides the luggage

Terrain, not distanceRacks and panniers on rough ground shake apart; soft luggage on smooth roads carries less for no reason.

The most common first mistake

Too much kit, too farA heavy bike over an ambitious distance is how a first trip becomes a last one.