Bottles

Spod's Cage Rocket might sound the stuff of bad Fifties sci-fi flicks but serves as a refined, albeit relatively expensive alternative to the butchered bottle, freezer bag and elastic band bodge for hauling, everyday ride essentials.

The Scalatore drinking bottle from Elite is a stylish and functional piece of kit that would look the part on most road bikes. Its understated colour scheme and decals are far from garish, there's even a stylish picture of a mountain well, sort of - the graphics depicting a famous Giro climb (Stelvio) on the side of the bottle are a nice touch.

You can be the equivalent of an alpine st. Bernard and carry your own medicinal tipple whilst out on your next ride with Ahearne Cycle's Spaceman hip flask and holder. Basically it is a rather crudely welded, modified, bottle holder with a raw, unpainted finish that bolts onto your standard bottle mounts and which holds a generic hip flask snuggly in its grasp.

Biologic is Dahon's component and accessory arm, and they're currently busy growing their range of commuter friendly offerings. This Vacuum flask is designed to sit in a bottle cage and be operable with one hand, so you can enjoy your coffee on the way to work.

On a hot day it's nice to have a cool drink, and this Podium Chill bottle from Camelbak scores firstly for being an excellent bottle to drink from and secondly for keeping your water a little bit cooler. Don't expect it to work miracles, but it does have an effect.

At first glance this looks like a normal drinks bottle with some sort of cooling device in the middle and a hefty price tag. In reality it is quite a nifty idea, especially for multi-eventers or long distance cyclists.

I would imagine that any cyclist or runner who uses gel’s as part of training or racing has their own horror story of opening a sachet, the gel going everywhere wasting half the contents and coating your bike and face in a weird, gel wash. The gel-bot DOES eliminate this problem.

The humble water bottle is an unglamorous but essential item for cyclists, and one that manufacturers often try to improve in order to bring us the next best thing. Elite say that the material used in their new Buricci bottle, Higene, is designed to give a clear, untainted taste to its contents, and an antibacterial action to keep it that way.That may be so, but Elite seem to have taken their focus of some of the other factors that make a good water bottle.