Bertl Bikes

Sunday 22nd came round incredibly fast; time to fly! Soon enough I found myself in Gatwick South with a very laden trolley; a bike bag, snowboard bag, suitcase and hand luggage. After waving goodbye to the parents I set off in search of the well-hidden Transat check-in desks. While all the other operators are upstairs, open, signposted and easy to find, Transat are tucked away downstairs in an airport version of Harry Potters cupboard bedroom. Check-in sorted, things became very normal and routine for an airport and I was soon on the other side of security trying to find Owain and Alice; 2 of my future housemates. We'd only been talking for 3 days, but coincidentally we were getting the same flight to Vancouver. Upon meeting up I discovered my 5 hours of sleep the previous night had been a luxury - they were both functioning on 2 hours each after spending all night packing and moving the last of their accumulated items out of their flat! Yup, all that is mine... With a

It was Sunday 15th - it's just one week before I fly out to Canada and I figured that I should try to pack my bike. Top tips lay ahead! First off, assuming you're not using a big-ass box, you need a bike bag. I bought my Chain Reaction Cycles one before I went to Turkey last summer, at the time it was roughly £90. At the time of writing it is actually only £68. There're lots of options out there though, ranging from the bottom of the range CRC offerings upto Polaris' hard-box type bag at £400+ and a whole host inbetween. As per usual I was on a budget, and so have the cheapest option. Last year I was riding a 16.5" (medium) Trek Superfly 29er XC bike, which is relatively small, light and compact and a nice starting point on my bike-bag packing experience. The only problem at the time was fitting the wheels into the wheel bags, that was tight, but doable.* * Quick review - I have used the bag to and from Turkey with it weighing upto 35kg's on the r

Cappadocia - along some epic singletrack on a spectacular ride I've been biking longer than I can remember and these days it has developed from a hobby into a passion, a job and hopefully a career, but it's not always been like that... While I was growing up we were not well off, every bike I had during my earlier years was built from what we recovered from the local tip. (To this day, I've not owned a 'new' bike) I can remember spending hours outside with my dad while he built bikes for friends and he was constantly fixing or tinkering with own bikes. In those days I wasn't so hot on the maintenance side of things, it wasn't as interesting as actually riding the bike! Fortunately things have changed and all my bikes are built by myself, although only my road bike is a genuine scrapyard bitser. While I was 13 or 14 we joined a local MTB club called the Chiltern First 15, or C1XV - I was by far the youngest and most fearless but I loved being out r