21 Step Guide To Packing Your Bike This Summer

Helpful mountain biking holiday company Singletrack Safari has just launched two new online resources, just in time to help mountain bikers prepare for their holiday this summer when it comes to packing their bikes. Now available as both a step-by-step photo guide, and as four and a half minute long video, Singletrack Safari's light-hearted "21 Steps to Packing Your Bike in 21 Minutes –ish" takes riders through getting their bikes ready to travel – in an easy to understand and foolproof manner. Martin Hills, who founded the company and created the guides, says: "We've been amazed by both how often people ask us for advice on packing bikes into bags, and how little information there is available online about how to do it properly. Actually we've also been pretty appalled by some of the "packed" bikes which we have seen being hauled out of bags; either in a throughly underprepared, or completely over the top state of wrapping! The idea of these guides is to help people get the right balance between just enough packing to stop anything getting damaged and not using so much that you get excess baggage fees!" Spotting a lack of MTB-specific help online, Martin set out to create a helpful "how-to" guide, and also seeks to reassure potential travellers that travelling with your bike does not have to be difficult – and the benefits of travelling with your own bike greatly outweigh the disadvantages of hiring a bike at your destination. Martin continues: "Many people worry unnecessarily about flying with their bikes – it is actually very easy and safe to do. With a little advice you can be sure your bike is unlikely to emerge damaged at the other end – and we'd also like to reassure people that reports of bike damage are on the whole very exaggerated. The only time we have ever seen bikes get damaged on flights it's been the result of poor packing rather than mishandling by baggage staff! In fact, with bike bags being bulky and difficult to move they are more likely to physically carry it separately to the plane rather than throwing onto a conveyor or crushing it amongst the suitcases. In fact, bikes are usually the last thing onto the plane, and the first thing off." "We'd always recommend taking your own bike on holiday: having to learn the handling traits of an unfamiliar bike can take time on familiar trails, let alone on new and quite possibly highly challenging ones in comparison to your regular routes! Hire bikes (especially cheap ones) are not always of a reliable quality either – they are often elderly, possess a very basic spec, or worst of all can be poorly maintained. Would you really like to be at the top of an alpine pass, with a 20k long technical singletrack descent ahead of you, on an 8 year old, poorly maintained hard-tail with slightly ineffective brakes, which someone gave you that morning? It sounds like scaremongering, but we strongly feel that not only are you safer on your own bike, but you will have an awful lot more fun too! Taking your own bike is always our first recommendation – and as you will see from the guides, it's very easy to do!" The video guide can easily be located via either the Singletrack Safari youtube channel, or by visiting the company's brilliant website www.singletracksafari.com – where the step-by-step photo guide can also be found on the blog page. Singletrack Safari is a totally unique new approach to traditional MTB holidays; it offers a range of holiday destinations throughout Europe - but moves its entire operation, staff and facilities (such as a fully equipped mobile workshop) from country to country at different times of the year. Guests receive an incredible "highlights" experience whereby they are delivered to the trailhead of the greatest and most famous riding locations in their chosen destination every day in luxury transport - during the course of an amazing week-long highlights holiday based in quality hotels. www.singletracksafari.com