Equipment

I'm an engineer by trade and my favourite phrase is "I could make one of those" so I always have to fight my inner demons when making a purchase. My wife loves going shopping with me :)

This has carried through to equipment for bikepacking but I have made some purchases - and Father Christmas helped out too!

Sleeping bag - I already had a really good synthetic sleeping bag from Nanok but, being synthetic, it was bulky and heavy (2340g). Reading various forums it seemed clear that a down bag is more suitable to bikepacking - just don't let it get wet! More forum research led to a British company - http://www.cumulus-sleepingbags.co.uk/CumulusPrimeSleepingBags.htm Their Cumulus 400 weighs 905g and has a 'comfort' rating of -7⁰C. More importantly it compresses down to around 15x15x30cm!

My sleeping bag of choice - Cumulus Prime 400

Bivvi bag & tarp - I already have an ex-army bivvi bag and tarp which, although there are lighter ones, will be fine for my first trip. I did buy some poles though. I know - poles are soooo easy to make yourself or cut from the forest. These were cheap, light and gold anodised though so I'm sure you understand :)

The label that was attached to the poles - I may get on to trading standards....

I purchased a 70cm pair from here:  http://bearbonesbikepacking.co.uk/pages/contact.html

Cooking - If I didn't already have a good stove I would  have purchased Alpkit's new 45g Kraku stove.

Now that is a tiny stove.

I already have a MSR Pocketrocket so I really couldn't justify buying the Kraku.......yet! I did get sidetracked with meths stoves for a while, making a few coke can stoves and a tiny (as opposed to tinny) one made from an aluminium scent bottle:

Experimenting to see how small you can go with meths...

I did buy a few things from Alpkit though, including this titanium MytiMug. A 125g gas canister fits neatly inside.

Bike luggage - Alpkit came to the rescue with a custom made frame bag & a few dry-bags.

Alpkit's excellent Stingray frame bag

I already had a saddle mount dry-bag that I'd used on a previous bothy trip so all that was left was something to fit some more luggage on the handlebars. 

An old Ortlieb saddle bag should do the job.

There are a few options available on the internet but this was a chance for my inner-engineer to break out!

I'd spied these bottle cage mounts on eBay and thought they could be adapted to suit my needs. My first huge engineering leap was to use one for mounting my bottle cage :)

Bottle cage mount used as a ......... bottle cage mount :)

Bending a bit of aluminium channel and filing some notches I ended up with something that should let me strap a dry bag across the handlebars without fouling any of the cables.

Two of these on the handlebars should hold a drybag firmly enough.

This week I'll think about clothing and food. Mmmmm, food!