I think it's fair to say I've had an awesome year on bikes!
2024 started with a lap of Taiwan in February and ended with the highlight - a dash across Australia - in October. I say that nonchalantly like it's just something I did on the spur of the moment, but the Australia trip had been brewing in my head for some time.
To be honest, I didn't want to set a plan in stone because I was never really sure I could make the three and a half thousand kilometers across some of the loneliest roads in the world. I could never be sure I'd complete such a whopper of a ride, but I could make sure that I had the right kit for the job.
By last summer I had assembled the perfect bike, a Fara All-Road with SRAM electronic shifting and a modular cockpit with aero bars. I fitted a lovely pair of Pirelli tyres to a pair of deep set carbon Zipps and turned my focus to luggage. Fara also make a frame bag that fits the AR perfectly and clicks in and out with magnets and a saddle bag that fits with magnets and straps and everything is pretty tough, perfect for the job.
The final piece to procure was a front roll. With this in place my kit list would be perfectly complete. I didn't really need to carry much because I had a support car meeting me each night so it was just spares for the road, clothing, some lights, navigation kit and food - OMG so much food!
So after a considerable amount of research I found the Race Aero Bar Bag from Restrap that looked perfect. Mounting a bag up front in this way is probably the most convenient and fastest way to carry gear in the front half of a bike. You can get more onto some fork mounted racks but it's slower. Also there's something really pleasing about having the top of the aero bag serve as a kind of dashboard where you can place chocolate bars and Garmins.
Now the trip is completed... all 3500 km of it... I can tell you the pros and cons of the Restrap and of aero bar bags in general.
The bag itself is not as big as I thought it would be. It carries 7 litres and it's pretty compact. It has the same easy detachable system as the Restrap saddle bag. A harder outer shell - the holster - is connected to the bars and a soft fold seal bag sits inside it secured with compression straps. It's never going to shake loose, you can be sure of that!
It's also very tear resistant. The outer holster is stiff and very strong. The Drybag is soft and fits securely with a Fidlock magnetic buckle with reflective details. It's all super light at just 278g.
Four straps secure the holster to the bars and there is enough adjustment available to fit pretty much any set of bars. My bars were sufficiently long enough for me to push the bag forward enough to leave space for a front roll as well - though I didn't take one. I was aiming for light and fast.
If I'd needed to carry a tent I would have had that in a front roll but I was focused on speed and efficiency here. The bag retails at a penny under £100 and comes with a lifetime warranty, just like any other product from Restrap.
The first part of my planning was to work out the prevailing winds. I'd been googling this obsessively for months and concluded that west to east was definitely the best way to get the miles done. The thing with wind though is that it never really plays ball! Where I was hoping for cool 15kph tailwinds I often got hot 25kph headwinds. They were relentless and utterly demoralising!
Occasionally it turned in my favour and it did so on one particular day in spectacular fashion... I started early just after sun up about 50km west of the South Australian border. It took a slow slog of 4 hours to get that 50km done, such were the conditions. I ate a well earned lunch at Boarder Town (odd spelling for a town on the border I thought, but never get to the bottom of why).
During lunch the wind started getting stronger and changing direction. That afternoon it had turned around and became a full on furious tailwind pushing me effortlessly across the Nullarbor plain. I was a bit worn out but I knew I had to take advantage of this random gift from Zephyrus (the god of westerly winds who I had literally prayed to at the end of every day).
It's about 180km from the border to the Nullarbor Roadhouse and nothing else between. Where there had been trees and rolling hills before, now the landscape emptied out and there were only flat, waist-high bushes for as far as the eye could see in every direction. I knew it'd be a wild camp in the dust storm with the snakes if I didn't make it. But the biblical wind howled and I rode on with the stormy front.
The light was dramatically dimmed by the dusty atmosphere on this day. I cruised on through the dry desert at an effortless 40kph with just a gentle nudge on the pedals and with stints of up to 60kph plus in the gusts and beyond when I got carefully overtaken by the odd thundering road train.
It all conspired to make me realise that this, out here, in the dust, getting blown about by Zephyrus is what life is really about. I felt super alert, I was alive again, and I had the energy to ride for however long it would take to get to the roadhouse.
For all the headwinds I'd had before and after, I wouldn't have swapped one of them for this tailwind that earned me the Nullarbor KOM on Strava, by some margin! Something I'll be immensely proud of for years to come!
The day also taught me a lesson about carrying luggage high on a bike. In the blustery change of direction the side winds pushed me all over the road. The Restrap was the main culprit because being strapped to the aero bars, they easily blew me off course, particularly when resting on your elbows. I abandoned the Restrap for the day and sent it on its way in my support car.
To be fair though, this was a pretty extreme example and for every other day of the 26 days my journey took, the Restrap was a faithful companion. I carried a set of gravel tyres and a few spare tubes and tools in the Restrap to begin with. But the slicks worked so well. Even on the gravel where it was muddy or just rocky rough. So I just kept pushing on with the slicks and never felt the need to swap them out.
By the time I realised that I would probably not need to carry the spare tyres with me, I also realised that everything - EVERYTHING - was impossibly filthy... Except the contents of the Restrap, hermetically sealed in the fold up system bag.
In the outback, the dust gets into everything and my sleeping bag and PJs were about as dusty as the backside of a big red roo preening itself in a dried up old billabong. So I decided to store these in the Restrap to keep them dry and clean. At the end of each day I was exhausted but at least it kept me from climbing into a dusty sleeping bag!
It's easy to get attached to your gear on these long rides. I'll keep this bike for ever because of the memories. The Restrap has also earned a nice little spot in my affections, mostly for its reliability in keeping my sleeping gear clean! It seems insignificant now but it's difficult to overestimate how important staying clean is after a few days of wild camping on the trot. I was very pleased to have it with me.
Riding the last leg into Melbourne the Restrap looked every bit as good as it did when we set out. What a journey. This rig and I had conquered this continent together and it was now indelibly inscribed into another chapter of my life.
The Restrap race aero bar bag helped create some of the best biking memories I've ever made and that's why I am pleased to wholeheartedly recommend this beautiful piece of kit. Thank you Restrap. I'm looking forward to more adventures in 2025 - with clean and dry PJs.
Restrap Race Aero Bar Bag - £99.99 - restrap.com
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