The ultimate bikepacking packing list

Bikepacking means freedom, nature, and: minimalism. “Less is more” is the motto, as it’s easier to ride that way and you can focus on what really counts. However, there are few things you can’t do without if your bike trip is going to be a complete success. Our ultimate bikepacking packing list highlights what you absolutely must have in your bike bag, and what you can safely leave at home.

We’ve been on many bikepacking trips and forgotten to take lots of things with us—but we’ve also needlessly schlepped a lot around with us. The result of our experience is this packing list, which also served us well when preparing for our tour of Scotland. On our North Coast 500 tour, we were traveling for five days in the wind and rain, staying in hotels, bed & breakfasts, and also in a tent. You will find everything we had with us to have a good time on the new Road Rage in our packing list.

Under the heading “Nice to have” we have also listed a few things that aren’t so important, but which are still worth thinking about. To help you prepare perfectly for your bikepacking trip, our packing list is available to download here as a PDF. Simply print it out and check off each item once it has made its way into your bikepacking bag.

Here we sum up everything you’ll be wearing while you’re on the road. Much of it is pretty logical—you’re hardly likely to go on a grand tour without your cycling shorts. But a lot is also easily forgotten, such as your Buff or rain jacket if the weather’s nice when you set off. If this had happened to us on our Scotland trip, we would have had a real problem: we were met with nothing but rain for the first four days. For this reason, we also stayed in B&Bs more often than we’d originally planned. At least that allowed us to dry our drenched clothes in the evening.

Other than the panniers, there wasn’t much that we mounted on our bikes. Little detail: In order to be able to carry a camera tripod on the frame, Martin mounted his two water bottles on the front of the fork, which is conveniently equipped with attachment eyelets for that purpose.

Here, we made a clear decision in advance: if possible, we would stop at restaurants or supermarkets on the road, or eat in our accommodation in the evening. That saved us a huge amount of packing stress. However, we still packed a few energy bars and a few packs of outdoor instant food for emergencies, which proved to be very useful: when we arrived in Laide, all the stores had already closed and we were really glad that we could cook up some tasty noodles on our camping stove.

There are lots of different preferences here. Some swear by hammocks, some are happy to lie on the concrete of a bus stop in an emergency, while others plan from the outset to spend the nights in the comfort of hotels. Your own personal preferences will decide what needs to be packed and what doesn’t. Obviously, if you are going to be sleeping in a hotel, your sleeping bag is just dead weight. We wanted to be flexible and in a pinch simply pitch our tent somewhere that took our fancy. And even though we slept outside much less than we had planned, it was absolutely the right thing to do to take a tent and the like with us.

Hygiene is something else that means a different thing to different people when it comes to bikepacking. If you are sleeping outdoors in particular, it will be difficult to avoid a more “interesting” smell working its way into your layers of clothing after a few days. The incessant rain on the first few days of our NC500 tour gave us a very singular fragrance. It didn’t bother us—stinking a bit is all part and parcel of bikepacking, right? And you don’t need all that much for a basic level of hygiene...