Bike Bag Postage

[DuDuDugarry]

Afternoon all.

I'm cycling from Chester to Bordeaux in May for charity. I'm flying home after and have the bike booked onto Ryan Air with me. I thought it would be simple enough to post my bike bag out to the hotel in Bordeaux in advance but it turns out to be really quite expensive by courier and too large for surface mail. I just wondered if any of you good people had done anything similar or whether you had any better ideas ?

Thanks

[Reigncloud]

We do this every year. Make sure you clear it with the hotel or campsite first of course, as some don't like to hold parcels for you. We've not stayed at some places purely on this basis before.

In terms of sending your bag, we have used Transglobal Express in the past. These guys buy large amounts of shipping space with Fedex, DHL, DPD etc and get it cheap as a result. They then onsell it to you at a cheap rate - much cheaper than the original courier company. Sending two fold-up canvas bike bags in a cardboard archive box to Western Europe was about £30 from memory. Not sure if your bag is a full size hard case. We have two of these, which fold up to about 30cm x 30cm x 15 cm.

http://www.decathlon.co.uk/bike-carry-b ... 23151.html

Just make sure you fill out all the customs forms correctly as we had one box very inconveniently rejected by Swiss customs!

[bigjim]

You can probably just buy a bike box at the airport for £10. Pad some of your smelly gear arond te bike. They tried to force us into buying one at Biarritz. Less hassle and the check-in are happy as they think they have just ripped you off for a cardboard box. Every one is a winner

[ruffstuffbob]

Bike boxes at airports...anybody know if there is a list of the airports who sell these. I hope to fly back from Venice later this year via Ryanair. Thanks. Bob. J.

[Tonyf33]

We do this every year. Make sure you clear it with the hotel or campsite first of course, as some don't like to hold parcels for you. We've not stayed at some places purely on this basis before.

In terms of sending your bag, we have used Transglobal Express in the past. These guys buy large amounts of shipping space with Fedex, DHL, DPD etc and get it cheap as a result. They then onsell it to you at a cheap rate - much cheaper than the original courier company. Sending two fold-up canvas bike bags in a cardboard archive box to Western Europe was about £30 from memory. Not sure if your bag is a full size hard case. We have two of these, which fold up to about 30cm x 30cm x 15 cm.

http://www.decathlon.co.uk/bike-carry-b ... 23151.html

Just make sure you fill out all the customs forms correctly as we had one box very inconveniently rejected by Swiss customs!

Well if those are the bags you used Transglobal quote aroud £400 for ONE to France given the dimensions quoted for the bags.
Firstly the cheapest way to send stuff is to dismantle your bike & send the wheels seperate. Take off the cranks and mudguards (if any) and turn your forks inwards which will easily get it inside the dimensions I did a quick quote for below.
Keeping your wheels packed separately from the frame avoids the problems with excess volumetric weight charges which all couriers use now (& have done for years) This means your package is assessed for volume weight not actual mass weight.
I did a theoretical quote based on a previous bike I sent to Italy (Carbon fibre monocoque frame as well)
Parcel2go charges £34.26+VAT for 2 boxes via Parcelforce Euro priority, One at 12kg 110x25x60cm, the other 8kg 74x30x74cm. You'll need to add insurance as required which is incremental per £100 up to £1000

http://www.parcel2go.com/

[Reigncloud]

We do this every year. Make sure you clear it with the hotel or campsite first of course, as some don't like to hold parcels for you. We've not stayed at some places purely on this basis before.

In terms of sending your bag, we have used Transglobal Express in the past. These guys buy large amounts of shipping space with Fedex, DHL, DPD etc and get it cheap as a result. They then onsell it to you at a cheap rate - much cheaper than the original courier company. Sending two fold-up canvas bike bags in a cardboard archive box to Western Europe was about £30 from memory. Not sure if your bag is a full size hard case. We have two of these, which fold up to about 30cm x 30cm x 15 cm.

http://www.decathlon.co.uk/bike-carry-b ... 23151.html

Just make sure you fill out all the customs forms correctly as we had one box very inconveniently rejected by Swiss customs!

Well if those are the bags you used Transglobal quote aroud £400 for ONE to France

I think you're missing the point here. We're not talking about shipping whole bikes - we're talking about shipping the *bike bag only* to your destination so that you can pack you bike and fly home. This saves looking for bike boxes in foreign cities/airports. You'll note above that I mentioned my bike bag folds down to 30cm x 30cm x 15cm.

Thanks for the info on posting a full bike though - all good information.

[Tonyf33]

Ah, got it, apologies