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planning a point to point ride next summer in Europe - flying back from a different airport to the inbound flight.
only logistical hurdle I can’t think of a guaranteed fix is a bike box / packaging for the return flight.
Had thought of using a bike shop in the destination city to collect a bike box - but with a small group this is by no means guaranteed, as they may not have multiple boxes on the day we require them.
For people that have experience of these sorts of things - any solutions to this?
When we signed up for the French Divide we were given details of a bike shop close to the finish that we could contact to arrange boxes. Obviously that was pre-arranged between the FD organisers and the shop but I suppose you could do the same, just ring/email and say you'd like a certain number of boxes on a particular day.
me and the wife rode across BC. arriving in Vancouver ditching our boxes to recycling and rode up vancouver island and took ferry to prince rupert and rode the highway of tears and through the rockies over to calgary where i had already emailed ahead a few weeks previous to a local shop and asked them to box our bikes.
it cost me 60 bucks CAD a bike for box plus packing but it was worth it to guarantee a box. Dropped them off , went and saw the sights on our last day and then got a taxi to the airport
I took a bike bag and forwarded it to my end destination post restante.
I take a CTC Bike Bag and a roll of duct tape when I go touring from point to point. Mostly OK but in 14 flights I've had one broken klickfix bracket and a slightly bent wheel.
Where are you thinking of? I live in Cataluna and do a trip from Tarragona to Bilbao in the Spring every year, Med to Atlantic, it's routed through some fantastic scenery and historic places. It runs over 9 days and just about 1,000km, we offer a service whereby my wife takes boxes or bags to Bilbao ready for return flights on the Sunday. The chain type bike shops such as Decathlon don't generally have surplus boxes, their bikes arrive in store built up and smaller shops don't open Sunday, or even Saturday afternoon in some areas.
"Where are you thinking of?"
Geneva to Nice - Routes des grandes alpes.
"OK but in 14 flights I’ve had one broken klickfix bracket and a slightly bent wheel"
I'll be on my "good" (Carbon Fibre, Di2 etc) roadbike, so would like something a bit more substantial.
THanks for all the replies.
You can buy cardboard bike boxes in terminal 2 at Nice airport.
We have just finished Torino-Nice Rally and there are 5-6 bike shops in Nice, so when we finished we managed to get two bike boxes from the Giant Store. If we'd not been able to find any from bike shop, then the plan was to go to Decathlon and get any large cardboard boxes from them and make something up. They were huge E-Bike boxes so plenty of space.
I was in Nice airport this summer. The left luggage facility in the airport had bike boxes for sale. Cant remember the price.
I've looked into this too, Geneva to Nice and found Safe Bag offer bike boxes at the airport.
https://www.safe-bag.com/en/bike-box/
As above, pick your airport first then find out which airlines are there and do some research online.. You don't necessarily need to be flying with them to buy a bike box. AirNZ for example have bike boxes for sale at almost every NZ airport for around $30. They're flat pack, you'll need some tape and a scissors.
Depending on where you're flying you could you also ask a local bike shop if they can box your bike up and ship it home for you for a price? Again bike shops here do this, they often send a lot of bikes via couriers so will have preferential rates.