On The Saddle

Where creaking knees will no longer go, modern cycling kit can carry!

- Cameron McNeish

ALMOST 40 years ago an old pal of mine, Robin Adshed, wrote a book called Bikepacking For Beginners. Robin, like me, was a member of the Backpackers Club, a nationwide organisation that I’ve been proud to chair for the past 20 years or so.

Backpacking can be described as hiking, carrying all you need – shelter, food, fuel and clothing – in a rucksack on your back. Your journey may be for six weeks, six months or simply overnight but the crucial element is that you are self-sufficient.

As Robin saw it all those years ago, bikepacking was doing exactly the same thing but on a bicycle, and the Backpackers Club, in its 45 years existence, has always encouraged cyclists as well as walkers.

What has changed is the equipment, and where people choose to journey. Off-road touring bikes, with fatter tyres and stronger frames, allow today’s bikepackers to take to high mountain tracks and trails, journeys not contemplated 40 years ago… except by a gang of cyclists known as the Rough Stuff Fellowship.

These hardy adventurers were legendary. They thought nothing of riding and carrying ordinary touring bikes over some of the toughest, roughest terrain in Scotland, sleeping out in bothies, dosses and tents. The bikes used were not specifically designed for rough tracks as today’s mountain bikes are, although it has to be said that most contemporary Rough Stuff Fellowship members have happily embraced modern technology and use bikes with disc brakes and suspension.

A few years ago various injuries made hillwalking very difficult and I took to the bike, just as my old pal and predecessor Tom Weir did many years ago. I wanted to continue lightweight camping so I became a bikepacker, in the widest sense of the word. I also managed to fit in some decent cycling trips – Land’s End to John O’Groats, and the length of Ireland.