Tuscany Trail: Packing list & Bikepacking Bag Review

I rode the Tuscany Trail 2019 and want to tell you about my experience with bikepacking bags. The trail runs through Tuscany from Massa to Capalbio with 550km and 9000m up. The 700 riders took between 2 days and – maybe a week. Before the trail I got a selection of bikepacking bags for testing, kindly provided by Arkel, Ortlieb, Vaude – plus I had Salsa bag systems. It was difficult to choose which combination of bags to take:

Roughly guessed, around 50% of the 700 people on the trail had Ortlieb bikepacking bags, and the rest of the people had very different bags (ranging from Apidura, Blackburn, GRAMM, Salsa, Transalp, Vaude etc.). I did not see any bags by Arkel; strangely, because I really liked them.

I chose the following setup for my 4-5 days trip:

• Arkel Seatpack (15L)
• Ortlieb Framebag (6L)
• Ortlieb Handelbar Pack (15L)
• Ortlieb Cockpit Bag (<1L)
• Salsa EXP Anything Cradle, Handelbar Set
• 2x Salsa EXP Anything Cage on the fork

I will review the gear in another blogpost.

This is how it looked like on the Surly ECR 29+.

Well, the bike is packed: 15 kg bike plus 15 kg of gear. Most other people were traveling lighter – and on many climbs I wished I had left stuff at home. Next time, I will plan to reduce 5kg, and I will explain how.

Packlist & reducing gear

This is my packlist and the column on the rights shown in red what I would leave home the next time.

I would leave the Salsa EXP Anything Cradle at home the next time, because it was just too much stuff for the short trip. Below, you will see how I will make it. I might also leave the Salsa EXP Cages at home – or pack them with water.

• Best option to reduce stuff is to sleep in hotels. You just need some changing clothes and repair stuff, which will be around 5kg luggage.

• Battery packs: I navigated with my IPhone (Komoot) and also had a Sigma ROX 11 computer. The two need quite a lot of power. So I got a SIStech Solarcard, which loads a 5000 mAH battery pack within around 5-6 hours. My plan was to attach it to the bike when riding – it works, but was quite lose on the trails and often slipped aways so I stuffed it away in the end. Anyhow: We stopped for coffee or meals every 2-4 hours and loaded our phones and battery packs. So I mainly used my 5000 mAH battery pack and did not even touch my 10.000 mAH pack. Next time, 5.000 plus 10.000 mAH is sufficient for such a trip, even when navigating with a Phone.
• Books: I would leave my Tolino E-book reader, which only weighs 250g including cover; but which I only used on the train (in the evenings I talked or slept).
• Raingear: I took a windstopper, a rainjacket and a pair of raintrousers, which add up to almost 1kg. However, it was sunny and 30 degress+. Next time in Italy in summer: no raintrousers, maybe even no rainjacket but only the windstopper.
• Tent: I took my Big Agnes 2-3 person tent, which is the smallest I have. It was good to have it, but I would consider taking a tarp or bivi-sack next time to save around 1kg
• Lock: I would leave my 1kg lock at home – because I was almost always with my bike, so a very light lock would have been sufficient.
• Bike bag: I use the TranZbag (600g) to pack the bike to take it on the train. It is a great bag, because you can pack your bike into it and then take it as hand-luggage – at least in Switzerland. In Italy, the conductor of the IC was rather unhappy with it, so on my way back I used regional trains. You can easily (and very cheaply) take your bike on regional trains in Italy, which I would prefer the next time. Positive is that you can also use the bag as a footprint.
• Water: I had a 1L water bottle and a 0.5 bottle (in my bags as reserve). There were some parts where there were hardly any houses, but usually you could fill up your bottle by asking at some house or at some well, so 1L would have been enough.
• Lights: I brought two sets of lights, but as I didn’t want to travel in the night, just one small light would have been sufficient.
• Clothes: I really brought too many clothes. You just need your bike pants and a shirt. Plus changing stuff. I had around 2-3 options for changing.
• Send stuff to the finish: Tuscany Trail offers for a little charge to bring stuff to the finish. So the TranZbag, clean clothes, Tolino are all candidates for sending them.