Carradice Bowland Bar Bag 20L

The Carradice Bowland Bar Bag is built for bikepacking adventures. It will withstand some of the worst weather imaginable and ensure that your kit stays super dry. When used in conjunction with a Carradice Bagman Bar support it delivers an exceptionally stable ride with no hint of wobble, but it may cause issues with narrow handlebars.

It was 6am in Chepstow and we had a 600km weekend ahead of us coupled with enough ascent to put us near the summit of Everest. I suddenly noticed my ride partners for the weekend shuffling towards my bike, their pupils heavily dilated.

‘Is that the new Carradice bar bag?’ asked one, reaching out a hand to touch it.

If you want to bewitch and tantalise cyclists of a certain long-distance persuasion, then luring them in with an exotic new bike bag can be remarkably effective. I pushed my way through the crowd to give them a whistle-stop tour of its features before we set off towards Menai.

The Bowland is part of Carradice’s new Adventure Range and it’s aimed at long distance riders and bike-packing adventure tourers.

It’s made from 1,000 denier ‘military grade Cordura’ (why does everything need a military comparison?) and inside is a bright fluorescent orange lining. There’s an inner roll top and then a generous lid that clips over this to keep the rain out.

On the outside there are elastic bungees to stash clothing you might need in a hurry and four D-rings to secure additional kit.

To top it all off, there’s a reflective Carradice logo and a small tab to attach an emergency light on the front.

It’s easy to attach to your handlebars with a pair of locking straps and there’s an additional flap at the bottom to secure it to the wire Bagman Bar Support to ensure it doesn’t bounce around.

The Bowland bag comes in two size options: a 12L bag at £104 and the larger 20L version that I was testing that costs £124.95.

I was also testing the new Odyssey Saddle Bag and the pair of them look rather lovely together. I was itching to get going and so we rode off in the direction of Wales’s lumpiest bits.

Performance on the road

We had the Machynlleth Mountain Pass ahead of us – over 600m of ascent in 19km. I was expecting to struggle pushing this load up the hill and then to experience a wheel wobble or vibration on the fast descent. Not a bit of it.

Used in conjunction with the Bagman Bar Support, this bag stays brilliantly stable. There’s not a hint of wobble or sway and I honestly hardly noticed it for this first ascent.

As we got to Pen-y-Pass later in the day, the weather turned foul. There was a downpour on the ascent and then the drop into Llanberis channelled gusting winds up this windy, potholed road. It’s a treacherous descent at the best of times, but with the wind whipping rain the wrong way up the hill, I struggled here.

This was possibly the worst weather I have experienced on a bike. I was soaking wet but the Bowland Bar Bag kept everything perfectly dry. And that extra carrying capacity meant I was the only person in our team of eight who was packing a totally fresh set of kit for the next day.

Sticky debris

I often use a Carradice Super C handlebar box on longer rides and this is easy to open to access kit on the move. It makes it possible for me to use phones, eat sandwiches, peel satsumas and even tinker with battery packs on the go.

The Bowland Bar Bag doesn’t give you the same level of accessibility. It you want something in the bag, you need to get off your bike, undo two layers of security and dig around inside.

It does have the useful elastic bungees on top to stash a gilet or rain jacket. I found this very useful for kit that needed to dry off, but I would have liked a way to get to other items more easily and ideally on the move.

To solve this, I tucked a few bananas under the upper lid and these helped fuel the first 100km of my ride. Banana skins did leave a slightly sticky debris on the Cordura material, although that did finally wash out thanks to the torrential rain.

At the 346km point of the ride – in the depths of night as we rounded Snowdonia – I was caught in an exhausted loop of repeating the words ‘Sticky Debris’ and decided this would be a good stage name if my career took a nosedive and I needed to turn to the more secure world of the theatre.

One other small gripe I have with both the bag and the support system is that it can create an issue with lighting. I run a dynamo on two fast audax bikes. As these are positioned above the mudguards at the front, there was no issue here. It might however be worth checking this if you have a smaller frame or your dynamo is positioned higher.

I also like to run a brighter light to pick out potholes on rough terrain and faster descents at night. While the Bowland bag has a light attachment at the front, this is really only enough for a small clipped light that will aid visibility, not one big enough to shine a pool of light on the road.

The support system and height of the bag might also make it hard to use this in conjunction with handlebar mounted lights. Again, you will need to check this as it depends on the system that you prefer to use. I wasn’t able to use my usual setup here, but the dynamo light proved sufficient for my needs.

Narrow handlebar warning

Come day two of our ride, I was feeling pretty smug in a fresh set of dry bib shorts with a soggy set of cycling gear now stashed in the bar bag. This got me closer to the 6kg limit for the Barman Bag Support.

It also meant that the Bowland Bar Bag itself was heavier and wider. That was fine until we got to our final major hurdle – an ascent of Gospel Pass: Wales’s highest mountain road at 549m.

I needed to change gears regularly as the gradient oscillated wildly between remorseless and brutal, but the now more voluminous bag restricted the full movement of my gear shifters. This meant I was having to push the bag to one side of the handlebars to change gears – which was not ideal while trying to navigate random sheep on the road and one particularly pig-headed camper van driver who was keen for me to ride in the gully over a precipitous drop.

My handlebars are 420mm wide and I would suggest that this bag needs a set at least 440mm or wider. I eventually moved the Bowland Bar Bag to my fixed gear bike with 460mm handlebars (that clearly doesn’t need gear shifters). Fixed requires a slightly different approach on hills and again, even fully loaded, this bag performed very well.

Value for money

You are going to find lots of options out there, but none delivers quite the same functionality, so this becomes an exercise in trying to triangulate.

For example, you can buy the Apidura Expedition Handlebar Pack that we first tested back in 2016. It will cost you £100 and performs very well on the road, but despite its bikepacking aspirations it only comes in a 9L version, or a 14L option that won’t work at all with narrower handlebars.

The Ortlieb Handlebar Bag will cost you £120 and comes in two size options – a 9L or 15L version – but, as with the Apidura bag above, it will struggle with drop handlebars.

Alpkit offers its 20L Deluge bar bag that costs £45 and doesn’t require an additional support system, but this is basically a dry bag and it will make kit harder to access and won’t offer the same level of stability on the bike. And again, Alpkit recommends the smaller 13L pack for handlebars narrower than 440mm.

To assess the cost of the Bowland bag, you have to factor in the additional price of the Bagman Support System at £69.95. This is clearly more expensive than any of the options above, but what you get here is a huge capacity; a product that will work with a relatively good range of handlebar sizes; and one that will deal with anything that the weather can throw at it.

The best comparison on price would be Carradice’s own 5L Super C Handlebar Bag that is £89.95. So if what you want is the additional volume on offer with the Bowland Bar Bag, then this product represents pretty good value for money.

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Conclusion

This is a really fantastic option for bikepacking and big adventures. It is very durable, brilliantly designed for fast bike trips and is superbly weatherproof. Used in conjunction with the Bagman support system, it offers a fantastically stable ride on the road. It is definitely worth your consideration, but you do need to make sure it works with your handlebar and lighting setup and your aspirations for biking adventures.

Verdict

Great performance, stability and durability on a product that will take you on great adventures into the wildest weather

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