Bicycle Luggage Special

Lately all the things I seem to find or ideas I have had have seemed to point in the same direction, that direction is towards bicycle luggage. It might seem like a slightly odd axiom to the threads of my spare time but that is how it is.

To begin with some of the ways in which the theme has been seeping into my consciousness I will post the below pictures from a couple of magazines I won on e-bay. They are from 1913 and have wonderful cover images (the chap on a punt is an example of this). Note the stylish luggage featured in the bike snippits...




Some of you reading may have spotted the early Brooks advert on the corner of the page above, so did I. I was reminded of my lovely brooks Glenbrook saddle bag which I love terribly but don't use very often because in Exeter it would probably be stolen and my Mother bought it for me Christmas just gone. I needed something less precious.

This book has some great passages about luggage. This was a present from a local junk dealer and was very well received. I remembered having seen it somewhere before but couldn't think where, then I remembered it was on the Tweed Cycling club's website. Found it? Somehow, although I can't quite see why now looking back at their pictures, I thought that perhaps a good satchel would be a possible solution. So the next weekend I happened to be looking through a couple of barn's belonging to an antique dealer and found this...


A good, heavy canvas fishing bag with a nice wide strap and lots of pockets. It really does the job nicely and it stays with me when I lock the bike up making it much harder to steal.

That said though I have started working on a leather bag made from some old folios I have cut up. The sewing machine just about goes through the leather if turned by hand. I am just waiting for the buckles to arrive in to-morrows post and then it can be finished. If I remember I will put a picture of it on here. It doesn't look as scruffy in real life.