Eight Useful Bike Touring Kit Items:

We already gave you our Five Essential Kit Items for any Bike Tour and now here are eight additional super useful extra items that we cannot be without!

1. A Swiss Army Pocket Knife

If you follow our blog, you will know that our Swiss Army Pocket Knife is something we carry on all our longer trips. They are fantastic. On a bike tour when having your daily picnics you can open tinned food, slice cheese, open a bottle of wine or beer and even adjust bike parts with a Swiss army knife.

I found on one Amazon but they are pretty easy to get your hands on wherever you live.

TIP: If you know someone heading off on a bike tour (or any big backpacking trip) they make a great gift!

2. Oil for Bike Chain and Discs

There is nothing more annoying (in my opinion anyway) then listening to the persistent squeak of a bike chain for hours on end. A bottle of chain oil is inexpensive, small and lightweight so do yourself a favour and pop one in your handlebar bag and thank me later when you save yourself the headache of “chain squeak”.

3. Wet Wipes or Baby Wipes

It is inevitable that you will get your hands dirty at some stage carrying out bike repairs, or your legs dirty when you brush off your newly oiled chain… this is where the wet/baby wipes come in! They are so handy to have in your handlebar bag for easy access. You could just have a few in a resealable ziplock bag. If you have white or light coloured bar tape you will be even more pleased with yourself to be able to clean your hands after repairs before hopping back on your bike.

4. Insulation Tape

Whether you decide to carry a roll of insulation tape or simply wrap some around a pen that you are bringing with you - it is super handy to have. One thing we used it for was when my handle bar tape unravelled mid cycle but was quickly fixed back with some insulation tape, good as new.

5. Plastic Bags & Resealable/Ziplock Food Bags

Plastic bags are sooooo handy. You can use one to cover your saddle in the rain during your coffee break or to store wet items in your bag so as to protect your dry gear, for example. The heavy duty type are great for storing your rain coat in, then clip it to the back of your bike for easy access; we got two bike tours out of our heavy duty Tesco plastic bags using them in this way!

The same goes for resealable food bags, great for snacks such as nuts and also for containing potentially spill-able liquids such as sun-cream in your handlebar bag. If you are organised and make sandwiches/wraps etc for daily lunches on your cycle trip then you will need them too.

6. Reusable Cutlery

Reusable cutlery is another great lightweight inexpensive item to have in your kit for all those al fresco picnics you will be eating along the way. Plastic, metal or wood, you decide but you will get your moneys worth that is for sure!

I like this bamboo set from Amazon and think I might upgrade my current plastic set to these!

This metal set has great reviews on Amazon and looks neat.

If you would prefer lightweight plastic then this foldable set good.

7. Elasticated Bungee Cords

The top of our back racks have a carrier area between the two panniers. We general put a 2Litre bottle of water and rain coat into a heavy duty plastic bag and bungee them on here (far easier than packing them into a pannier as you need to access them frequently). Also, if your pannier connectors were to break, always good to have a bungee available as a back up plan to support your bag until you can fix/replace it. Just a really useful item to have, again they are very cheap and lightweight.

We have used one of these exact ones each for 8000+kms so far!

We also have one of these each as a spare.

8. Portable Bluetooth Speaker

This is another item which is always with us when we travel, not only when we bike tour. I know some people will think this is a luxury item but we love our clip on JBL Waterproof Portable Bluetooth Speaker. It is compact, convenient, has a great sound quality and I think you will agree it is super cute! It is also really handy if you are using your phone for GPS as well as music as of course you will hear the directions via the speaker. We do not listen to music continuously, but have found having music great on long cycle days, when you are grateful of a little distraction or need some motivation.

One thing I have to mention, when the bike lanes are busy and/or there are other cyclists around us we do not use our speaker; we would never interrupt someone else’s cycle with our “noise” or inflict our taste in music upon others. We understand many love cycling for peace and quiet and we respect that.

More Bike Touring Blogs:

I hope you find the above tips useful! You might like some of our other bike touring blogs so we have attached some links below to make it easier for you to find them:

Even more noroadlongenough bike touring blogs available here.

If you've any questions, suggestions or just want to say hello, contact me via the Contact Form, Instagram (@noroadlongenough) or By Email noroadlongenough1@gmail.com