Picture the scene: I'm a week into a cycling tour and have unloaded a pile of panniers into the vestibule of my palatial tent. I'm ready to relax and now must find clean/dirty pants to lounge in as I reflect on the day's route.
I plunge my arm into the cavernous depths of my pannier bags, fingers rooting around for the fragrant goods like a subterranean mole hunting out polycotton worms.
After a few seconds of guessed fumbling, my hand grasps something. Yanking at the tangled mess of cycling kit and civvies, I eventually wrestle free a travel towel, sigh with frustration, give in, and dump the lot at the foot of the tent.
Cycling kit removed and bedclothes donned, I stuff it all back into my pannier, only to repeat the sorry affair when I need kit again the following morning.
But it needn't be this way!
Spotted at Corebike, it turns out Ortlieb makes a range of clever packing cubes that fit perfectly into its Back-Roller panniers – my preferred panniers for touring.
With divider pockets and a plastic stiffening structure, the cubes look like the best way to bring sense to my panniers.
Roll-top stuff sacks would achieve the same thing, but they have two key drawbacks.
First off, stuff sacks are generally designed to be waterproof.
That goes both ways, so stuffing stinky kit into these only encourages a funky miasma to develop. I've used mesh stuff sacks to achieve order, but these lack structure and tend to become tangled.
Secondly, round bags don't pack neatly into the square shape of a pannier.
That's a very minor point, but if you're at the limit of what you can carry – a fairly frequent occurrence if I'm venturing into the back of beyond for a few days on my tandem – every little bit counts.
If it isn't clear already, I'm sold. I'll report back on whether they deliver on my hopes of life-improving order after this summer's tours.
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